'Piï-yrL 


HELLAS 

and 

UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 


The  Policy  of  Victory  in  the  East  and  Its  Results 

by 

GEORGES  BOURDON 

%r' 

» 

Smyrna,  a  Greek  City 

by 

CHARLES  VELLAY 

Hellenism  in  Asia  Minor  in  the  Middle  Ages 

by 

CHARLES  DIEHL 


Translated  from  the  French  by 

CARROLL  N.  BROWN,  Ph.D. 
The  College  of  the  City  of  New  York 

1920 


Published  by  the 

AMERICAN-HELLENIC  SOCIETY,  Inc. 

Columbia  University  Post  Office,  Substation  No.  84,  New  York,  N.  Y. 


% 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Columbia  University  Libraries  * 


.V 


https://archive.org/details/hellasunredeemedOOunse 


THE  POLICY  OF  VICTORY  IN  THE  EAST  AND 

ITS  RESULTS. 

% 

By  Georges  Bourdon* 

If  I  am  here  to  address  you  today,  it  is  not  because  I  have 
been  asked  to  do  so.  It  is  I  who  have  desired,  speaking  quite 
independently  and  on  my  own  responsibility,  to  inform  French 
public  opinion  of  deeds  and  misdeeds,  about  the  scandalous 
nature  of  which  it  entertains  not  the  slightest  suspicion.  You 
will  have  no  difficulty  in  believing  me  if  I  tell  you  that  I  am 
not,  in  any  sense,  yielding  to  a  feeling  of  vanity.  In  the  solemn 
feeling  of  expectancy  in  which  the  world  is  living  at  present, 
it  would  be  a  criminal  act  to  make  imprudent  suggestions, 
and  we  should  feel  only  scorn  for  a  bad  citizen  who  was  capable 
of  raising  his  voice  for  causes  foreign  to  the  interests  of  France 
and  the  future  of  peace.  Having  recently  returned  from  a 
long  journey  which  took  me  successively  to  Greece,  Asia 
Minor,  Constantinople,  Thrace,  Bulgaria  and  Macedonia, 
I  feel  that  I  am  fulfilling  a  real  duty  in  bearing  testimony 
publicly  to  what  I  have  heard  and  seen,  and  in  pointing  out 
the  dangers  into  which  a  blind  policy  and  egoistic  interests 
threaten  to  precipitate  a  glorious  and  at  the  same  time  terrible 
victory. 

The  most  elementary  notions  are  there  jumbled  together 
and  opposing  ideas  are  closely  dovetailed.  I  arrived  in  the 
Orient  with  what  I  believed  to  be  simple  and  in  no  way 
original  views.  Right  soon  I  was  made  to  see  to  what  a  degree 
these  views  were  superficial.  You  probably  cling  to  the  archaic 
idea  that  community  of  peril  creates  community  of  interest 
and  that  the  peoples  that  were  in  the  league  against  death  still 
maintain  this  feeling  of  solidarity  in  time  of  safety.  You  will 
find  in  the  East  plenty  of  people  who  are  knowing  enough  to 
smile  at  your  ingenuousness.  It  is  the  refinement  of  finesse 

*This  article  is  a  translation  of  an  address  entitled,  Ce  qu’est  devenue  en  Orient 
la  politique  de  la  victoire,  delivered  in  Paris  on  June  11,  1919,  before  the  Ligue 
de  PEnseignement,  under  the  auspices  of  the  Ligue  “Droit  et  Liberté.” 


1 


2  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 


to  be  the  friend  of  one’s  enemy,  the  adversary  of  one’s  ally; 
to  align  yourself  with  him  who  has  raised  his  knife  to  smite  you, 
as  against  him  who  helped  you  to  escape  the  thrust.  That 
seems  to  be  the  way  that  a  man,  in  civil  as  well  as  military  life, 
as  a  government  official  or  a  private  citizen,  in  business  as  well 
as  in  politics,  succeeds  in  making  history.  It  is  likewise  by 
this  manner  of  procedure  that  people  rebuff  goodwill,  spoil 
friendship,  compromise  their  credit,  feed  fanaticism,  revive  the 
arrogance  and  covetousness  of  the  vanquished  and  over  the 
corpse  of  baffled  justice  plant  the  seeds  for  future  conflicts. 
In  this  topsy-turvy  world,  we  come  at  every  step  on  furrows 
where  cynical  or  foolish  hands  are  casting,  with  reckless  pro¬ 
fusion  and  with  peremptory  gestures,  the  pestilential  germs 
from  which  new  carnage  will  tomorrow  arise,  unless  this  stupid 
desire  is  checked.  Downright  lies  are  mingled  with  sophistry, 
and  the  coalition  of  right  which  brought  us  victory  is  broken 
down  by  the  coalition  of  egotism,  and  a  whole  crowd  of  in¬ 
capables,  who  call  themselves  realists,  are  as  a  matter  of  fact 
only  the  marionettes  of  a  troop  of  profiteers  who  call  them¬ 
selves  patriots. 

I  shall  be  obliged  to  speak  of  our  allies  and  in  particular  of 
our  friends  the  Italians.  I  will  do  this  with  frankness,  guard¬ 
ing  against  all  charge  of  ambiguity.  I  am  one  of  those  who, 
though  regretting  it,  can  find  explanations  for  the  wrecking 
of  that  beautiful  ship,  which  ever  since  Aug.  2,  1914  has  borne 
the  Sacred  Union  of  all  the  French,  but  I  am  also  one  who, 
neither  for  today  nor  for  tomorrow,  can  accept  the  hypothesis 
that  the  Sacred  Union  of  the  Allies,  of  all  the  allies,  small  and 
great,  can  be  repudiated.  Together  we  went  into  battle,  to 
the  sacrifice,  and  to  the  victory;  together,  with  hands  clasped 
and  hearts  united,  we  must  advance  over  our  future  paths,  only 
anxious  to  remove  pernicious  obstacles  and  to  call  to  our  side, 
when  the  time  comes,  both  the  spectators  of  the  combat  and 
the  adversaries  who  have  there  opposed  us. 

Between  our  allies  of  yesterday  and  our  friends  of  tomorrow 
we  have,  however,  the  right  to  reserve  privileged  places  to 
some;  with  a  sincere  heart  we  have  given  Italy  her  place. 
We  have  a  common  origin  and  our  languages  have  a  common 
source;  our  interests,  along  many  lines,  coincide,  and  can  be 
mutually  helpful;  nowhere  are  they  contradictory;  our  tem- 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  3 

peraments  are  to  a  certian  degree  identical;  we  form  the  Latin 
family,  and  if  it  is  necessary  for  the  sake  of  common  harmony 
that  there  be  a  balancing  of  influences  and  races,  it  is  upon 
Italy  and  ourselves  that  the  duty  devolves,  in  the  civilization 
of  tomorrow,  to  sound  the  rallying  call  of  the  Latin  races, 
unless  we  wish  this  world  to  become  a  purely  Anglo-Saxon 
world.  France  and  Italy,  united,  will  assure  peace  in  the 
Mediterranean,  and  peace  in  the  Mediterranean  is  a  condition 
prerequisite  to  European  peace. 

This  said,  we  demand  from  Italy  that  she  consent  with  good 
grace  to  make  the  same  sacrifices  for  the  common  good  that  we 
have  been  content  to  make,  and  not  to  render  too  difficult  the 
task  of  the  friends  who  have  sincerely  helped  in  our  task.  In 
the  very  midst  of  war,  when  our  armies  in  the  Orient  were  most 
grievously  menaced,  Italy  did  her  best  to  perpetuate  Greek 
anarchy,  to  save  to  the  pro-German  Constantine  his  dishonest 
throne,  to  discredit  by  the  basest  calumnies  the  great  Cretan 
Venizelos,  and  to  bring  to  naught  the  work  of  reparation  of 
the  Provisional  Government  at  Salonika.  It  was  certainly 
not  in  the  interest  of  our  coalition  that  this  regrettable  policy 
came  to  the  fore.  It  is  now  ancient  history;  let  us  not  dwell 
upon  it.  And  yet  it  was  only  yesterday  that  brilliant  speeches 
and  numerous  articles  in  the  Italian  press  were  launched  against 
us  with  furious  invectives.  The  organ  of  Mr.  Giolitti,  La 
Stampa,  permitted  itself  to  describe  the  German  disaster  as 
a  political  catastrophe  for  Italy,  and  denounced  the  ‘extreme 
harshness’  of  the  peace  imposed  on  Germany  ‘by  the  well- 
known  blind  hatred  of  the  French  and  the  exaggeration  of  the 
sentiment  of  revenge’.  Unjust  and  deplorable  statements, 
which  will  fall  with  all  their  weight  on  those  who  utter  them.  We 
might  disdain  to  notice  them,  if  they  were  isolated  expressions 
and  did  not  give  evidence  of  being  part  of  a  systematic  plan. 

This  systematic  plan  can  best  be  caught  in  full  action  in  the 
Orient.  It  is  being  spread  openly — I  am  almost  tempted  to 
say  officially.  When  the  Italian  policy  is  active  in  favor  of 
Turks  or  Bulgarians,  or  against  the  Serbs  or  Greeks,  it  is  always 
just  barely  within  the  bounds  of  the  common  policy.  Every 
time  that  a  measure  of  public  order  is  required,  or  that  some 
complaint  appears  necessary  before  Turkish  or  Bulgarian 
authorities,  the  Italian  representatives  participate  with  the 


4  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 


tips  of  their  fingers,  and  merely  for  form’s  sake.  Every  time 
on  the  contrary,  that  these  same  authorities  essay  a  resistance, 
they  are  sure  to  find  an  advocate  in  the  Italian  as  against  the 
Frenchman,  the  Englishman,  or  the  Greek.  In  the  thousand 
and  one  details  of  military  occupation,  the  Italian  officer 
takes  the  part  of  him  whom  it  is  really  his  duty  to  control. 

He  has  little  or  nothing  to  do  with  his  English  or  French 
comrades,  but  in  Bulgaria,  he  walks  openly  with  the  Bulgarian 
officers,  and  in  Smyrna  there  is  even  a  club  in  which  a  room  is 
especially  reserved  for  the  daily  meetings  of  Italian  and 
Turkish  officers.  In  Sofia  the  society  dames  organize  teas 
in  his  honor,  and  on  two  occasions  Greek  and  Serbian  officers 
threatened  to  withdraw  from  the  Intèrallied  Military  Club  if 
the  Bulgarians  were  admitted,  as  the  Italians  had  insistently 
demanded.  At  Smyrna  the  Italian  authorities  exerted  them¬ 
selves  through  advertisements  in  the  papers  to  bring  about 
Italian  naturalization  among  this  interloping  Levantine  popu¬ 
lation  which  throngs  the  harbors  of  the  Levant  and  which  has 
never  been  so  eagerly  courted.  There  was  there  a  commissioner 
named  Manfredi,  who  made  himself  so  obnoxious  that,  on 
the  request  of  the  French  High  Commissioner,  he  was  recalled. 

We  do  not  contest  Italy’s  right  to  choose  her  friends,  but 
until  the  peace  is  signed,  when  we  find  ourselves  in  the  pres¬ 
ence  of  peoples  who  only  yesterday  were  fighting  against  us  and 
who  will  remain  tomorrow  the  declared  enemies  of  our  best 
allies,  and  when  it  is  a  matter  of  making  governments,  upon 
whom  we  have  hard  terms  to  impose,  feel  the  threat  of  force — • 
the  only  argument  that  amounts  to  anything  to  races  that  know 
only  brutal  domination  or  submission — we  are  certainly  justi¬ 
fied  in  regretting  that  allied  solidarity,  before  allowing  itself 
to  dissolve,  should  not  await  the  final  hour  of  settlement.  If 
we  add  that  this  statement  is  made  not  without  a  feeling  of 
profound  disappointment,  Italy  will  surely  see  in  this  not  so 
much  regret  for  aid  lost  as  sorrow  for  a  friendship  compromised. 
Is  it  wounding  her  or  is  it  rendering  homage  to  her  to  make  a 
cordial  appeal  to  her  loyalty  and  to  invoke,  in  our  mutual 
interest,  the  recollection  of  so  many  great  hours  in  which  a 
seal  has  been  set  upon  Latin  fraternity? 

In  order  to  show,  beyond  any  possibility  of  doubt,  that 
such  a  policy  brings  heavy  risks  to  peace,  it  is  enough  to  see 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  5 


the  Turk  and  Bulgarian  at  work  and  to  look  into  their  thoughts. 
Do  they  regard  themselves  as  conquered?  Not  in  the  least. 
The  former,  with  that  faculty  for  forgetting  and  submitting, 
which  is  a  result  of  oriental  fatalism,  thinks  no  more  of  the 
bloody  defeats  in  Mesopotamia,  and  will  tell  you  that  if  he 
surrendered,  it  was  because  the  fall  of  Bulgaria  and  Austria 
left  him  alone  in  the  center  of  a  coalition  of  enemies;  his  in¬ 
violate  capital  is  for  him  the  proof  of  a  power  that  the  Allies 
feared  to  affront. 

As  to  Bulgaria,  the  case  is  still  better.  It  was  the  will  of  the 
people  under  arms  which  put  an  end  to  a  war  that  was  always 
unpopular.  Mr.  Theodoroff,  President  of  the  Council,  told 
me  this  in  the  plainest  of  terms.  It  was  necessary  to  conceal 
from  this  people,  which  had  only  feelings  of  tenderness  for 
Russia  and  affection  for  France,  the  fact  that  they  were  taking 
up  arms  against  the  French  and  the  Russians;  having  advanced 
victoriously  through  Macedonia,  they  at  once  informed  the 
Government  of  Ferdinand  and  Radoslavoff  that  they  would 
advance  no  further,  and  in  fact,  for  a  year,  the  army  contented 
itself  with  holding  the  positions  it  had  acquired;  at  the  end  of 
that  time,  war-wearied,  it  signified  its  desire  for  peace,  threat¬ 
ening  to  turn  and  march  upon  Sofia.  It  was  necessary  to  yield. 
“If  we  made  peace,”  Mr.  Theodoroff  concluded,  “it  was  in  a 
feeling  of  confidence  in  your  justice.”  In  a  question  of  justice, 
we  all  know  that  the  Bulgarians  are  experts.  How  refuse 
justice,  if  not  gratitude,  to  a  people  which  turned  its  cannons 
away  from  our  army,  in  order  to  threaten  with  them  its  own 
government?  y( 

When  a  race,  historically  and  psychologically  trained  to  the 
cult  of  force,  is  freed  from  this  burden,  and  when  those  who 
now  wield  power  to  the  end  that  justice  may  be  done,  seem 
to  spend  their  ingenuity  in  finding  excuses  to  abdicate;  when  a 
conqueror,  settled  in  the  land  of  the  conquered,  appears  to 
have  no  other  thought  than  to  make  people  forget  that  he  is 
the  conqueror,  is  it  to  be  wondered  at,  that  the  conquered, 
cherishing  the  illusion  that  he  still  possesses  the  power,  recurs 
to  his  old-time  arrogance,  and  by  cleverness,  by  bargaining, 
or,  if  need  be,  by  deeds  of  violence,  (which  he  may  always  dis¬ 
avow),  tries  to  take  advantage  of  the  weakness  of  his  conqueror, 


6  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 

in  order  to  wrest  back  from  him  a  part  of  what  he  lost  at  one 
blow? 

This  is  exactly  what  one  sees  in  Bulgaria. 

The  country  is  sprinkled  with  little  Italian  posts  and  you 
can  imagine  that  their  control  is  not  very  exacting.  But  by 
a  singular  failure  to  understand  military  necessities,  the  terms 
of  the  armistice  neglected  to  impose  there  a  state  of  siege,  and 
also  committed  the  mistake  of  leaving  the  direction  of  the 
railroads  in  the  hands  of  the  Bulgarians,  in  such  a  way  that 
the  Bulgarians  are  masters  of  all  the  means  of  transportation. 
At  Sofia  an  Interallied  staff  is  located,  with  French,  English, 
Italian,  Greek  and  Serbian  sections,  at  the  head  of  which  is  the 
French  general  Chrétien,  the  supreme  representative  of  the 
Allies  and  acting  under  General  Franchet  d’Espérey,  Com- 
mander-in-Chief  at  Constantinople  of  the  Armies  of  the  East. 
Bulgarian  officers  are  everywhere  to  be  seen,  promenading  with 
head  high  in  air,  with  arrogant  looks,  tightly  belted  and  stiff 
figures,  uniformed  like  Russians  but  bearing  themselves  like 
Prussians.  Are  these  the  conquered, — these  military  men, 
who,  parading  along  the  sidewalks,  yield  not  an  inch?  How 
absurd  !  The  people  remember  having  seen  a  division  of  prison¬ 
ers,  liberated  by  General  Franchet  d’Espérey,  pass  under 
arches  of  triumph,  in  the  midst  of  popular  acclamations 
saluting  the  victors.  Many  of  them  were  without  doubt  such; 
they  have  journals,  to  which  our  military  censor  is  more  kind 
than  to  our  own,  which  let  them  understand  every  morning 
that  it  was  only  with  their  permission  that  the  Allies  entered. 

They,  as  well  as  their  soldiers,  salute  neither  the  French  nor 
the  English,  to  say  nothing  of  the  Greeks  and  Serbs,  who  are 
anathema  to  them,  and  whom  on  occasion  they  insult  right  in 
the  street.  Salutes  are  only  offered  by  the  Bulgarian  soldiers 
to  the  Italian  officers.  Nay,  it  often  happens  that  Bulgarians 
publicly  arrest  French  soldiers.  There  was  a  captain  of  our 
staff  who,  when  insolently  accosted  by  a  Bulgarian  com¬ 
mandant,  insisted  on  receiving  from  him  the  salute  that  the 
simple  soldiers  systematically  refuse  to  our  officers.  On 
another  occasion  a  Bulgarian  officer  and  one  of  our  privates 
met,  face  to  face,  in  a  footpath  in  the  snow.  “Don  t  you  see 
that  I  am  a  Bulgarian  officer, ”  said  the  first  stiffly.  “And  I,” 
said  the  poilu,  looking  him  square  in  the  face,  “am  a  French 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  7 


soldier.”  And  it  was  the  Bulgarian  who  had  to  step  aside. 
Our  soldiers  were  as  a  general  rule  known  for  their  amiability , 
but  this  man,  by  his  proud  reply,  avenged  the  humiliation 
of  his  chiefs.  In  vain  did  General  Chrétien,  on  more  than  one 
occasion,  issue  his  orders.  An  order  that  is  deprived  of  sanc¬ 
tion,  is  little  better  than  a  circular  note. 

Refusing  to  salute  is  the  extêrnal  evidence  of  the  lack  of 
respect  which  the  Bulgarian  feels  towards  his  conqueror. 
How  could  it  be  otherwise?  At  a  time  when  he  ought  to  have 
been  made  to  submit  to  authority,  does  he  not  see  that  it  is 
really  a  question  of  sparing  him — dealing  gently  with  him — 
and  oif  pleading  extenuating  circumstances  for  him?  When  the 
Bulgarian  ministers  in  the  hope  of  rescuing  from  the  shipwreck 
all  that  can  be  saved,  testify  that  the  Bulgarian  nation  was 
dragged  into  the  war  in  spite  of  itself,  and  that  in  a  choice 
between  Germany  and  France  the  deeper  sentiment  of  the 
people  has  never  hesitated,  our  friends  are  all  too  ready  to 
fall  into  the  trap;  and  if  by  a  singular  abuse  of  terms,  they 
dare  to  claim  ‘justice’  for  their  country,  I  have  seen  even  those 
of  our  representatives  that  were  best  qualified  to  judge,  proudly 
sitting  up  a  little  straighter  and  asking  scrupulously  whether 
the  Bulgarians  may  not  possibly  be  right.  I  shall  be  the  very 
last,  believe  me,  to  dispute  his  right  with  even  the  fiercest 
of  our  enemies;  but  if  we  do  not  wish  to  be  fooled  by  the 
fine  words  and  the  noble  ideals  which  are  the  glory  of  the  lang¬ 
uage  of  men,  it  behooves  us,  when  these  expressions  are  used 
by  perfidious  lips,  to  come  to  an  understanding  of  what  they 
really  mean. 

Furthermore  it  is  the  duty  of  the  plenipotentiaries  gathered  at 
Paris,  in  full  consciousness  of  their  duty,  to  give  justice  to 
the  conquered,  while  the  duty  of  the  General  Staffs  of  the 
armies  is  solely  to  assure,  without  harshness  but  also  without 
weakness,  obedience  to  the  victor’s  commands.  Besides,  what 
the  Bulgarians  call  justice  is  always  something  at  the  expense 
of  their  neighbors.  Unless  they  get  a  slice  of  Rumania,  a  part 
of  Serbia  and  a  big  piece  of  Greece,  you  hear  them  calling,  “To 
the  spoils!”  Mr.  Theodoroff,  certainly  an  intelligent  states¬ 
man,  and  gifted  with  great  oratorical  powers,  a  man  whom  we 
must  credit  with  having  been  steadily  opposed  to  the  war,  did 
not  hesitate  to  explain  to  me,  in  the  course  of  an  interview 


8  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 

of  more  than  three  hours,  that  Greek  Cavalla  was  indispensable 
,  to  Bulgaria  as  being  the  sea-port  whence  her  heart  and  her 
goods  could  most  readily  sail  out  toward  Marseilles  and  France. 

Mr.  Theodoroff  defended  the  interests  of  his  country.  I 
listened  to  him  deferentially,  contenting  myself  with  saying, 
“If  you  had  been  the  victors,  what  would  you  be  asking? 
What  a  surprise  it  is-,  however,  and  how  bitterly  disappoint¬ 
ing  to  hear  the  same  extravagant  statements  made  by  our  own 
representatives,  for  they  are  apparently  there  in  Paris  to  weigh 
the  claims  of  allies  and  enemies,  conquerors  and  conquered,  and 
to  find  some  equilibrium,  even  though  this  be  at  the  expense  of 
an  ally!  Have  we  forgotten  the  occurrences  of  yesterday;  the 
abject  perfidy  of  Bulgaria  in  negotiating  with  the  Allies  at  a 
time  when  she  was  already  riveted  to  Germany  by  bonds  of 
steel;  in  mobilizing  her  armies  while  she  gave  them  to  under¬ 
stand  that  this  was  being  done  in  their  behalf;  actually  lying, 
up  to  the  firing  of  the  first  shot  of  her  cannons,  and  as  cynical  in 
defeat  as  she  was  shameless  in  her  aggression;  Serbia  gasping, 
torn  away  from  her  land,  never  failing  during  her  long  martyr¬ 
dom  of  four  years,  always  heroic;  Rumania,  trampled  under 
foot  and  broken;  Greece,  too,  making  a  magnificent  front,  just 
as  soon  as  she  was  permitted  to  take  up  her  historic  tradition 
and  destiny  through  the  coup  of  Jonnart,  which  swept  away 
intrigue,  ignorance  and  stupidity,  and  gave  at  last  to  the  genius 
of  that  great  and  true  .man,  Yenizelos,  the  place  which  for  many 
months  Rome,  London,  and  Paris  had  been  haggling  about  or 
refusing  to  give  him?  These  men  affect  an  air  of  impartiality 
and  make  use  of  trenchant  and  scornful  formulae  such  as: 
“All  these  Balkan  peoples  bray  too  much,”  and  so  Turks, 
Bulgarians,  Greeks,  Rumanians,  Jugo-Slavs  are  all  put  in  the 
same  box  by  the  tribunal  of  the  Allies.  Among  these  Balkan 
peoples  there  are  those  who  have  subtly  plotted  our  death  and 
have  strained  every  nerve  to  strike  the  blow;  the  others  fought 
for  us  and  shared  our  sufferings;  what  would  have  become  of 
the  army  of  Macedonia,  if  the  eleven  Greek  divisions  which, 
by  themselves,  formed  more  than  half  of  the  Allied  forces  on  this 
front,  had  not  rendered  possible  the  offensive  of  1918,  which, 
by  bringing  Bulgaria  to  her  knees,  was  destined  to  draw  down 
to  their  destruction  both  Turk  and  Austrian? 

Against  these  men  of  varied  speech  that  I  have  seen  so 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  9 


actively  employed,  I  bring  no  formal  accusation.  How  could 
I  do  so?  They  are  sincere  and  they  fully  believe  that  they 
are  working  for  the  best  interests  of  the  Entente.  Their  only 
real  error  is,  perhaps,  that  they  are  over-playing  their  part  and 
making  diplomats  of  themselves,  when  what  is  expected  of 
them  is  to  be  soldiers.  They  do  have  another  failing,  but  one 
that  can  only  be  defined  paradoxically;  they  either  know 
nothing  about  Balkan  affairs  or  they  know  too  much,  if  I  may 
be  permitted  to  express  it  thus.  Take  the  case  of  the  English, 
who,  with  the  best  of  intentions,  have  sent  to  Sofia  to  form 
their  staff  certain  travelers  who,  as  being  familiar  with  the 
Balkans,  were  in  England  among  those  militant  Bulgarophiles, 
of  whom  we  have  a  complete  crew  here  in  France  as  well,  and 
over  whom  the  great  war  has  passed  without  destroying  a  single 
one  of  their  illusions.  General  Napier,  chief  of  the  English 
General  Staff,  was  one  of  these  and,  like  the  Italian  consul  of 
Smyrna,  he  so  completely  overstepped  the  bounds  of  what  was 
proper,  that  it  became  necessary,  a  few  weeks  ago,  to  recall 
him.  The  others  seem  to  ignore  all  the  abominable  excesses 
committed  by  the  Bulgarians  against  the  Greeks  and  the  Serbs, 
and  this  wilful  perversion  results  in  the  most  regrettable 
weaknesses  in  dealing  with  them. 

There  are  in  Bulgaria  whole  populations  of  Greeks  who  were, 
a  while  ago,  driven  out  from  their  villages,  and  who  now  can¬ 
not  obtain  permission  to  return.  Some  are  from  Turkish 
Thrace,  having  been  expelled  by  the  Turks  who  were  eager,  at 
the  time  of  their  ephemeral  victories,  to  reduce  the  numbers  of 
the  Greek  element,  which  predominates  there;  others  are  from 
Bulgarian  Thrace,  deported  from  their  homes  by  the  Bulgar¬ 
ians  to  whom  they  stand  in  the  ratio  of  three  to  one;  and  finally 
there  are  those  who  were  driven  out  from  Greek  Macedonia 
by  these  same  Bulgarians  when  the  treachery  of  Constantine 
had  left  their  doors  open  to  the  Macedonian  invasion.  Out  of 
all  these  unfortunates  many  demand  to  be  restored  to  their 
poor  homes.  In  vain!  The  others,  scattered  throughout  the 
land,  where  they  are  compelled  to  work  for  their  Bulgarian 
master,  are  not  to  be  found.  These  were  cases  where  it  was  the 
duty  of  the  authorities  of  the  Allies  to  intervene  energetically. 
What  have  they  done  tbward  repatriating  the  exiles  or  toward 
finding  the  missing?  In  order  to  bring  about  even  a  timid 


10  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 

intervention,  repeated  insistence  on  the  part  of  the  Hellenic 
representatives  has  been  necessary,  and  many  a  time,  when 
confronted  by  contradictory  affirmations  of  the  Greeks  and 
Bulgarians,  they  have  solved  the  conflict  between  their  duty 
and  their  desires  by  refraining  from  action. 

Permit  me  to  tell  you  a  sad  story  in  which  I  shall  call  people 
by  their  real  names. 

A  few  months  ago  some  Greek  officers  of  the  General  Staff 
in  Sofia  were  informed  that  there  was  living  in  Stenimachos,  a 
town  near  Philippopolis,  in  the  house  of  Colonel  Venedikof, 
a  little  Greek  girl.  They  learned  that  she  was  thirteen  years 
old;  that  her  name  was  Anna,  and  her  mother’s  name  Sophie; 
that  she  came  originally  from  Chatalja  in  Thrace,  and  that  she 
had  been  living  with  the  colonel  for  about  six  years.  At  the 
demand  of  the  General  Staff  the  latter  was  questioned.  He 
replied  that  the  little  Anna  had,  at  the  time  of  the  Balkan  War, 
been  found  by  his  soldiers,  in  the  underbrush;  that  she  was  an 
orphan  and  that  he  had  out  of  charity  adopted  her;  that  she  was 
furthermore,  a  Bulgarian,  daughter  of  a  dead  father  whose  name 
he  gave.  How  did  he  know  the  name  of  the  father  of  this 
orphan  found  among  the  bushes?  Where  did  this  little  Bul¬ 
garian  learn  Greek  so  well?  There  were  many  such  questions 
in  which  he  was  not  in  the  least  interested. 

Then  the  Grebk  Mission  ordered  an  investigation  in  the 
district  of  Chatalja.  Inquiries  are  easy  in  these  countries 
peopled  by  Greeks  whose  souls  have  been  united  by  a  long 
period  of  common  trials  and  sufferings  under  a  harsh  dominion, 
and  this  is  the  tragedy  which  was  at  once  revealed. 

In  the  month  of  January,  1913,  in  the  interval  between  the 
first  and  second  Balkan  Wars,  Bulgarian  soldiers  one  day  rushed 
into  the  little  village  of  Playa  and  fell  upon  the  humble  home 
of  a  poor  peasant  woman  named  Sophie  Melinidi  who  was  at 
that  time  a  widow,  but  who  has  since  been  married  to  Pantelis 
Kyriazoglou.  Sophie  Melinidi  had  two  children,  Anna,  who 
was  then  seven  years  old  and  a  boy,  Michalakis,  who  was  five 
years  of  age.  It  was  on  the  little  Anna  that  the  brutes  vented 
their  spite.  They  had  already  a  few  days  earlier  failed  in  a 
first  attempt.  The  second  attempt  succeeded,  and  in  the 
midst  of  the  terrified  cries  of  the  children  and  their  mother, 
and  the  angry  voices  of  their  neighbors,  the  little  Anna  was 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  11 


thrown  into  a  wagon  which  disappeared  at  once  with  the  horse 
at  full  gallop. 

This  gives  your  heart  a  pang,  and  perhaps  some  of  you 
doubt  the  accuracy  of  my  tale.  Let  me  tell  you,  then,  that 
these  infamous  abductions  are  common  occurences  in  the  war 
customs  of  these  Bulgarian  “gentlemen”;  that  more  than  a 
hundred  Greek  children,  carried  off  with  the  same  savagery,  have 
been  found  and  delivered  since  the  armistice  in  spite  of  diffi¬ 
culties  that  you  can  easily  imagine.  How  many  little  Annas 
are  at  this  moment  still  shut  up  in  towns  like  Stenimachos! 
We  must  think  of  the  future;  a  little  girl  is  the  chrysalis  of 
a  woman;  she  is  the  sacred  lamp  which  perpetuates  the  life  of 
races. 

There  can  be  not  the  slightest  doubt  that  the  little  Anna 
of  Stenimachos  is  the  little  Anna  of  Playa.  I  have  seen  her 
mother  tearing  her  hair  in  her  grief,  with  wrinkles  which  give 
her,  at  the  age  of  thirty-eight,  the  face  of  an  old  woman,  and 
from  her  I  heard  the  story  of  this  tragic  day  in  January,  1913. 
We  find  in  the  mysterious  recesses  of  these  reserved  souls  un¬ 
expected  sensibilities  which  are  the  rich  treasure  of  these  simple 
creatures.  When  I  asked  her,  “Was  your  Anna  pretty?”  she 
raised  her  coarse,  woolen  skirt  to  dry  her  tears,  and  with  a  look 
of  grief  she  made  this  reply  to  me  in  a  low  tone,  a  reply  the 
magnificent  tenderness  of  which  you  will  appreciate;  “A 
mother’s  children  are  always  beautiful  to  her.  All  that  I  can 
say  to  you  is  that  Anna  did  not  look  like  me.”  Here  was 
then  a  mother  without  a  daughter  and  a  daughter  without  a 
mother.  Across  the  gulf  of  time  and  space  we  succeeded  in 
uniting  them.  The  mother  made  the  long  and  painful  journey 
to  Sofia.  We  were  going  to  call  Anna  there  with  Colonel 
Venedikof,  and  in  the  close  embrace  of  mother  and  daughter 
six  years  of  anguish  and  despair  were  going  to  be  ended.  All 
the  lies  were  to  be  revealed.  But  stay!  Not  yet!  It  was  the 
second  of  April  when  Sophie  Kyriazoglou  arrived  at  the  capital 
of  Bulgaria  and  here  is  a  portion  of  a  letter  dated  the  20th  of 
May  that  I  received  a  few  days  ago:  “The  Staff  of  General 
Chrétien  ordered  a  meeting  of  mother  and  daughter.  The 
Bulgarian  authorities  replied  that  the  journey  of  the  little  girl 
presented  difficulties  and  would  occasion  expense.  They 
asked  therefore  whether  the  mother  was  disposed  to  meet  these 


n  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 

expenses.  We  immediately  replied  that  she  assumed  them, 
and  we  are  still  awaiting  the  arrival  of  the  little  girl  at  Sofia. 
For  nearly  two  months  the  mother  has  been  here  in  a  desperate 
state  of  mind.  There  have  been  more  than  five  letters  for  her 
to  come  back  but  we  see  nothing  happening.  The  distance 
between  Doupnitza,  where  the  little  girl  is  at  present  staying, 
and  Sofia  is  only  a  few  hours  and  the  railroad  is  in  operation.” 

In  the  discreet  reserve  of  this  letter  we  can  discern  the  bitter¬ 
ness  that  the  delicacy  of  an  ally  hesitates  to  express.  What 
France  has  done  for  our  women  and  our  girls  torn  from  the 
bosom  of  their  families  by  German  brutality,  shall  she  hesitate 
to  do  for  the  little  Greek  girls  that  have  been  torn  from  the 
arms  of  their  mothers  by  the  Bulgarians?  At  Spa,  Marshal 
Foch  makes  them  understand  the  language  which  suits  the  case. 
Why  do  they  not  imitate  him  at  Sofia? 

But  in  Bulgaria  it  is  not  only  stories  of  refugees,  of  the  de¬ 
portation  of  little  girls,  of  the  robbery  of  Serbian  flocks  or  of 
incursions  into  the  territory  of  Serbia,  that  space  forbids  me 
to  speak  of;  there  is  a  more  serious  thing.  By  the  terms  of  the 
armistice  Bulgarian  artillery  was  to  be  concentrated  in  a  par¬ 
ticular  place,  under  the  control  of  the  Allies,  and  all  the  breech- 
pieces  were  to  be  carried  to  Salonika,  which  was  then  the 
headquarters  of  the  army  of  the  Orient.  How  many  months 
has  it  taken  to  obtain  from  the  Bulgarians  the  execution  of  this 
capital  clause!  The  day  finally  came  when  the  artillery  was 
parked  in  the  designated  place.  Is  it  all  there?  Let  us  not 
be  so  indiscreet  as  to  expect  it.  As  for  the  breech-pieces, 
where  are  they?  At  Salonika?  No,  at  Sofia  !  You  have  heard 
aright,  the  Bulgarian  breech-pieces  are  at  Sofia,  for  it  is  chari¬ 
table  to  humor  the  susceptibilities  of  the  army  which,  at 
Ehivolak,  ambuscaded  and  decimated  a  French  division  which 
was  not  in  force.  And  it  would  be  too  painful  to  Bulgarian 
amour-propre  to  oblige  them  to  send  their  breech-pieces  to 
Paraskevopoulos,  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  Greek  Army!* 

*Two  days  after  I  had  revealed  this  fact  the  news  reached  Paris  that  Gen  era 
Franchet  d’Espérey  had  just  given  orders  to  have  the  Bulgarian  breech-pieces 
transported  to  Constantinople  —  not  to  Salonika  as  the  armistice  stipulated; 
under  the  surveillance  of  the  Allies  to  be  sure  at  Constantinople,  but  neverthe¬ 
less  (until  a  later  order)  in  Turkish  territory,  not  at  Salonika  in  Greek  territory. 
Up  to  the  limit,  then,  they  wish  to  spare  Bulgarian  feeling  too  cutting  a  wound. 
Even  to  obtain  this  result  a  strong  protest  on  the  part  of  the  Government  at 
Athens  was  necessary. 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  13 


If  you  will  pardon  the  expression,  I  assure  you  that  I  do  not 
want  to  eat  the  Bulgarians  alive  any  more  than  I  want  to  eat 
the  Germans  alive.  I  am  speaking  as  a  Frenchman  of  French¬ 
men  who  desires  justice  for  everybody  but  first  and  foremost 
for  his  country  and  for  the  allies  of  his  country.  I  demand 
that  up  to  the  hour  of  peace  the  enemies  of  the  allies  of  France 
be  treated  on  the  same  footing  as  the  enemies  of  France.  I 
protest  against  a  régime  of  privilege  which  equity  as  well  as 
common  decency  condemns. 

I  demand  that  the  same  indignation  and  the  same  sternness 
should  rule  our  conduct  toward  those  who  sought  our  destruc¬ 
tion  at  Monastir  and  Doiran  as  against  those  who  attacked  us 
on  the  Aisne  and  the  Marne,  for  it  is  time  for  us  to'reahze  that 
France  might  have  fallen  in  the  Balkans,  just  as  really  as  before 
Paris.  I  am  indignant  that  when  arms  have  just  been  laid 
down,  men  can  have  the  heart  to  give  themselves  up  to  an  exact 
balancing  of  those  who  have  served  us  and  those  who  have  be¬ 
trayed  us,  and  to  an  endeavor  to  find  excuses  for  the  latter 
and  to  reserve  all  severity  for  the  former.  I  say  that  such  a 
spectacle  is  immoral,  and  when  this  spectacle  is  given  by  men 
who,  as  exerting  authority,  ought  to  furnish  an  exaiiiple,  in  the 
fear  of  expressing  myself  too  strongly,  I  refuse  to  attempt  to 
describe  it.  If  you  want  to  know  what  France  gains  by  such 
practices,  listen  to  this.  In  the  month  of  March,  General 
Grigoroff,  in  command  of  the  38th  Regiment  at  Kirtzali, 
presiding  over  the  demobilization  of  the  40th  class,  addressed 
the  following  words  to  the  men  who  were  going  to  be  mustered 
out:  “You  have  conducted  yourselves  as  heroes  and  your  hero¬ 
ism  has  astonished  the  world.  If  you  have  had  to  yield,  it  is 
simply  the  fault  of  the  politicians.  I  salute  you  at  the  moment 
when  you  are  to  return  to  your  villages.  But  do  not  forget 
that  you  are  before  all  else  soldiers  and  that  it  is  possible  that 
you  may  soon  be  recalled  to  the  colors  to  chase  out  these  dirty 
dogs  of  Anglo-French  who  have  infested  our  country.”  A 
similar  speech  was  made  by  the  colonel  of  the  11th  Regiment 
at  Silimnos  and  it  is  probable  that  the  Bulgarian  barracks 
have  often  re-echoed  to  other  such  speeches.  In  very  truth,  to 
repeat  the  wish  of  Mr.  Theodoroff,  Bulgaria  has  great  need 
of  the  port  of  Cavalla  in  order  to  send  her  heart  out  to  her 
beloved  France! 


14  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 


Are  things  in  Turkey  any  different?  Since  interests  are 
more  considerable  and  desires  keener,  things  are  even  worse. 

Constantinople,  the  city  of  intrigue  and  dickering,  has  never 
ceased  to  be  the  melting-pot  in  which  sinister  egoisms  and 
equivocal  desires,  in  a  strange  mixture,  forever  seethe.  In 
bringing  to  light  what  is  going  on  today  in  Constantinople  a 
man  would  need  to  be  a  Balzac.  When  one  has  spent  forty 
months  in  the  army  and  has  arrived  from  our  murdered  and 
pillaged  France,  how  can  one  who  for  more  than  four  years 
has  so  profoundly  experienced  what  an  enemy  costs  us  and 
what  a  friend  is  worth  to  us,  help  trembling  at  the  spectacle  of 
a  carnival  where  miserable  Machiavellis  make  every  effort  to 
distort  the  facts  and  to  falsify  the  meanings  of  things  so  rudely 
hammered  out  by  a  Foch,  a  Guillaumat,  a  Franchet  d’Espérey 
and  other  great  soldiers. 

In  society  one  meets  only  women  who  pity  these  poor  Turks, 
these  generous  and  gentle  Turks,  for  whom  the  war  was  such 
bitter  suffering.  Without  a  smile  they  tell  you  that  the  whole 
people  shuddered  with  horror  when  they  were  compelled  to 
fight  their  good  friends,  the  French.  They  recount  various 
incidents  and  do  not  forget  to  tell  of  the  mother  who,  quite 
unlike  Cornelia,  was  eager  to  withdraw  her  son  from  the  army 
rather  than  send  him  against  our  troops  at  the  Dardanelles.  In 
the  offices  of  those  infallible  people  whom  we  call  ‘men* of  affairs,’ 
and  who  regard  themselves,  by  virtue  of  office,  as  political 
realists  in  the  secret  council  chambers  of  those  European 
functionaries  who  were  always  intimate  collaborators  with 
the  successive  Ottoman  governments,  even  that  of  the  sini¬ 
ster  Abdul  Hamid,  they  will  authoritatively  explain  to  you 
that  business  prosperity  is  closely  linked  up  with  safe-guarding 
this  state,  which  we  may  credit  with  having  done  its  best  to 
annihilate  France. 

Officers  will  tell  you,  in  their  familiar  lingo,  that  “the  Turk  is 
a  ‘good  sort  of  fellow’  and  that  it  is  easy  enough  for  all  except 
those  fools  of  Greeks  and  Armenians,  to  get  along  perfectly 
well  with  him.  ”  One  hears  even  stranger  things  than  this 
in  some  of  the  official  quarters.  And  yet  in  those  evil  days 
of  August,  1914,  when  Turkey  was  still  wearing  her  mask  of 
neutrality,  there  were  only  cries  of  joy  and  gladness  heard  in 
the  streets  of  Stamboul  over  the  first  successes  of  the  Germans, 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  15 

and  when  the  battle  of  the  Marne  was  fought,  no  one  has  ever 
heard  it  said  that  even  that  peasant  mother,  who  wanted  to 
stop  her  son  on  his  way  to  fight  at  the  Dardanelles,  raised  a  cry 
of  joy  in  empty  and  echo-less  space. 

“We  lived  then  in  terror  of  our  lives/’  say  the  Turks  of 
today,  contritely.  How  strange  it  is,  though,  that  this  great 
love  for  France  found  at  that  time  no  way  of  expression,  and 
that  among  this  race  which  has  never  been  distinguished  by  any 
great  respect  for  human  life,  and  where  assassination  has  been 
almost  a  policy,  no  hot-head  appeared  to  bring  Talaat  and 
his  tool,  Enver,  to  their  senses  by  the  most  appropriate  means! 

In  going  the  length  of  the  Balkans,  the  traveller  changes 
his  position,  but  the  sight  he  sees  is  ever  the  same.  At  Con¬ 
stantinople,  as  at  Sofia,  it  is  the  two-faced  Janus  that  greets 
you.  These  peoples  have  lost  the  game,  but  at  the  moment 
of  paying  the  stakes,  they  are  suddenly  overwhelmed  by  the 
truth.  In  all  haste  they  turn  to  the  past  their  war  face, 
and  behold!  it  is  a  peace  face,  illumed  with  joyousness  and 
fraternity,  that  beams  upon  you.  So  Bulgaria,  after  spiriting 
away  Ferdinand  and  Radoslavoff,  shows  you  Boris  and  Theod- 
oroff,  and  the  innocent  Padishah  installs  Ferid  in  the  chair  of 
Talaat.  I  may  say  without  irony  that  there  is  no  reason  to 
doubt  the  good  intentions  of  the  men  who  today  hold  the  power 
in  Turkey.  Many  of  them  have,  in  fact,  under  Talaat’s 
régime,  paid  for  their  honorable  feelings  by  exile  or  by  civic 
ostracism.*  But  when  they  repudiate  the  Unionists,  do  they 
take  fully  into  account  just  what  they  represent,  and  how 
great  a  force  it  is  that  they  must  defeat? 

If  we  come  down  to  solid  facts,  there  is  in  reality  only  one 
party  in  the  nation  that  counts,  and  that  is  the  Committee  of 
Union  and  Progress. 

*These  men  will  not  complain  that  they  are  here  maligned.  Auguste  Gauvain, 
a  writer  who  has  an  admirable  knowledge  of  the  Oriental  Question,  but  whose 
counsels  have  unfortunately  been  honored  more  in  the  breach  than  in  the  obser¬ 
vance,  wrote  only  yesterday,  with  much  sense  and  truth,  the  following  lines: 
“It  is  true  that  the  Young  Turks  of  the  Committee  of  Union  and  Progress  have 
governed  Turkey  dictatorially  for  the  advantage  of  the  Germans.  But  the  Old 
Turks  of  the  time  of  Abdul  Hamid  followed  exactly  the  same  policy.  The  only 
difference  between  the  two  epochs  is  that,  in  time  of  peace,  the  Turks  sought,  in 
the  other  Powers,  a  counter-poise  for  the  German  protectorate,  while  in  time  of 
war,  they  were  obliged  willy-nilly  to  completely  identify  themselves  with  Ger¬ 
many.  Damad  Ferid  Pasha  himself,  though  he  looked  askance  upon  the  Talaat- 
Enver-Djemal  triumvirate  was  with  them  heart  and  soul  from  the  beginning  to  the 
end  of  the  war.”  (Journal  des  Débats,  June  20,  1919). 


16  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 


In  1908  it  found  itself  in  the  presence  of  a  people  whose  only 
bond  of  union  was  the  religious  solidarity  of  Mohammedanism. 
Of  all  the  passions  capable  of  electrifying  an  amorphous  race 
this  was  the  strangest  to  it,  for  the  Revolution  was,  above  all, 
the  work  of  free-masons  and  of  the  donmes  of  Salonika,  that  is 
to  say,  renegade  Jews.  The  Committee  undertook  then,  re¬ 
inforced  by  high-sounding  phraseology,  to  constitute  a  national 
sentiment.  The  Turk  was  to  such  a  degree  lacking  in  this 
feeling,  that  the  idea  of  ‘fatherland’  could  not  be  expressed  in 
his  language,  and  it  was  found  necessary  to  borrow  the  Arab 
word  v atari  to  designate  this  conception.  The  vatan  forthwith 
became  the  grand  idea  and  the  solid  platform  of  the  revolution. 
Having  overthrown  the  tyranny  of  the  Padishah,  where  were 
they  to  find  from  now  on  the  principle  of  domination  and  the 
categorical  imperative  if  not  in  the  vatan ?  Is  it  not  passing 
strange  that  in  Russia,  as  in  Turkey,  the  first  move  of  these 
subtle  humanitarians,  who  were  at  work  there,  was  to  stir  up 
an  exaggerated  chauvinism,  and  that  Turkish  nationalism 
came  out  of  the  Salonika  revolution  in  just  the  same  way  that 
Russian  nationalism  began  to  work  itself  out  among  the  dregs 
of  Bolshevism? 

Having  found  its  sphere,  the  Committee  of  Union  and  Pro¬ 
gress  has  never  left  it.  By  its  unbridled  nationalism,  by  the 
exaltation  of  the  sentiment  of  race,  and  the  systematic  Turkif- 
ication  of  the  whole  Ottoman  state,  by  the  letting  loose  of 
fanaticism  against  the  Christian  populations,  it  has  entered 
into  hearts  hitherto  closed  to  it,  hearts  which  the  satrapie 
régime  of  the  Sultans  had  crushed  with  terror,  while  by  cor¬ 
ruption  and  patronage  it  served  individual  interests  and  thus 
gained  a  clientele.  As  against  these  are  the  self-styled  ‘lib¬ 
erals’  whom  our  victory  has  put  in  power.  They  form,  one 
may  say,  an  élite  of  Turks,  half  Europeanized  but  without  popu¬ 
larity  and  with  no  backing.  The  people  ignore  them  because 
they  do  not  speak  to  them  in  terms  that  they  understand,  and 
because  to  elemental  souls,  dominated  by  the  idea  of  form,  they 
have  nothing  to  offer  that  is  comparable  to  that  simple  and 
gripping  phrase,  ‘Turkey  for  the  Turks.’  Their  actual  task  is 
to  liquidate  the  war,  but  no  popularity  can  come  to  liquidators 
of  failure.  In  fact,  just  as  Germany  is  intoxicated  by  imperial¬ 
ism,  so  is  Turkey  infected  with  Unionism  from  one  end  of  the 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  17 


country  to  the  other,  in  its  capital  and  in  the  most  remote 
vilayets  of  Anatolia.  It  is  so  with  its  Sultan  in  just  so  far  as 
he  desires  to  continue  as  Sultan.  Turkey  is  this  by  virtue  of  her 
profoundest  instincts,  by  ten  years  of  furious  political  work 
and  increasing  corruption,  by  the  tyranny  of  an  administration 
that  the  Unionists  introduced  and  which  their  creatures  still 
maintain.  She  is  this  finally  because  she  could  not  but  be  so, 
from  the  time  when  charlatans  appeared  to  befuddle  her  with 
the  only  words  that  she  could  understand. 

I  came  to  know  at  Smyrna  the  Governor  of  the  province,  the 
famous  Noureddin  Pasha,  a  pleasant,  good-looking  man  of 
forty-seven,  the  victor  at  Ktesiphon  and  Kut-el-Amara,  and 
the  one  to  whom  General  Townshend  surrendered  his  sword. 
Noureddin  was,  further,  at  the  time  that  he  had  everything 
his  own  way,  a  steady  persecutor  of  Greece. 

A  league  of  reserve  officers  has  been  founded  at  Smyrna 
whose  constitution  and  by-laws  begins  with  this  declaration: 
“Our  duty  is  to  combat  to  the  death  any  decision  of  the  Peace 
Congress  which  shall  be  injurious  to  the  interests  of  Turkey.  ” 
In  order  to  explain  and  illustrate  it,  meetings  are  being  held 
in  which  they  take  the  most  terrible  oaths  to  massacre  every¬ 
body,  if  it  is  necessary.  Is  this  the  language  of  conquered 
people  or  of  those  who  recognize  that  they  have  been  con¬ 
quered? 

The  honorary  president  of  this  league  is  the  Governor 
himself,  Noureddin  Pasha.  There  you  have  a  real  Young 
Turk.  It  is  in  Asia  Minor  that  the  Committee  has  concen¬ 
trated  all  its  activity.  At  Constantinople,  where  the  head¬ 
quarters  of  the  Allies  are  situated,  the  Committee  feels  that  the 
difficulties  would  be  too  great;  Asia  Minor  is  a  very  extensive 
country;  the  Allies  have  not  as  yet  occupied  it  in  its  entirety; 
the  Committee  knows,  further,  that  the  unity  of  the  Allies  is 
only  nominal;  that  envy  and  jealousy  separate  them.  It  has 
kept  up  this  organization  secretly  and  has  its  officers  and  its 
men;  the  Turkish  ministers  themselves  agree  that  it  possesses 
much  money.  In  all  the  districts  bands  are  ready  awaiting  the 
hour  and  awaiting  the  order.  Mysterious  councils  take  place 
day  and  night  in  the  very  palace  of  the  Governor.  The  Gover¬ 
nor  receives  strange  looking  individuals  who  come  from  all  over 
the  province,  and  who  hold  long  interviews  with  him,  and  some 


18  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 


of  them  go  away  carrying  presents.  He  passes  as  being  the  soul 
of  the  revolt  that  people  see  is  being  prepared.  He  is  a  fine 
specimen  of  Young  Turk.  Everybody  knows  this  or  at  least 
can  know  this,  for  even  I  know  it. 

From  his  window  Noureddin  Pasha  can  see  anchored  in  the 
harbor  of  Smyrna,  in  the  splendor  of  the  sunsets,  the  great 
war-ships  of  the  Allies,  charged  with  keeping  surveillance  over 
him;  a  French  vessel,  an  English  and  a  Greek;  Italy,  too,  as  is 
seemly,  has  her  own  ship  but  with  different  ends  in  view.  Each 
of  these  vessels  is  commanded  by  an  officer  of  high  rank,  dele¬ 
gated  by  the  High  Commissioner  at  Constantinople.  They,  I 
doubt  not,  have  nothing  to  say  to  these  events.  During  my 
stay  Noureddin  was  recalled  by  the  decree  of  the  Grand  Yizier. 
Was  it  on  their  intervention?  Not  at  all.  It  was  simply 
because  he  had  refused  to  serve  on  members  of  the  Committee 
orders  of  arrest  which  had  come  to  him  from  his  own  Govern¬ 
ment.  The  Grand  Yizier  Damad  Ferid  Pasha  and  his  coad¬ 
jutors  are  doing  their  best  to  put  an  end  to  the  Committee  of 
Union  and  Progress;  between  them  and  him  it  is  a  duel  to  the 
death;  but  are  they  going  to  imprison  all  Turkey? 

Noureddin  has  been  replaced  by  a  good  Governor  who  has 
the  reputation  of  execrating  the  Young  Turks.  That  is  fine  ! 
Consider,  however,  what  happened  on  the  morning  of  the  15th 
of  May  last,  when  the  Greek  army  at  last  disembarked  at 
Smyrna;  from  the  night  before,  under  the  very  nose  of  the  good 
Governor  and  his  police,  proclamations  inciting  the  inhabitants 
to  resistance  were  spread  broadcast  among  the  Mussulman 
population  and  in  the  environs,  and  unknown  hands  were 
ready  to  open  the  doors  of  the  prisons  to  those  legally  con¬ 
demned.  The  sixty-three  deaths  that  resulted  must  be  counted 
against  the  Young  Turks.  This  was  not  their  first  misdeed; 
it  is  not  at  all  certain  that  it  must  be  their  last. 

In  the  month  of  March  they  were  assassinating  at  their 
pleasure  in  Anatolia.  If  I  consult  my  travel  note-book  there 
was  hardly  a  day  that  I  did  not  note  down  several  murders. 
Bands  of  Turks,  most  often  wearing  the  military  uniform,  as 
I  have  learned  from  ocular  witnesses,  approach  within  gunshot 
of  Greek  peasants  at  work  in  their  fields  or  ambuscade  them 
along  the  roads  and,  firing  their  guns,  kill  them,  mutilate  them 
and  escape.  If,  by  chance,  gendarmes  are  around,  they  watch 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  19 


the  spectacle  from  a  distance  and  then  enter  their  stations, 
where,  as  at  Eoudja,  after  a  famous  massacre  that  had  filled 
this  Greek  village  of  ten  thousand  souls  with  cries  of  terror 
which  I  heard  with  my  own  ears,  they  passed  the  night  in 
singing,  playing  the  organ  of  Barbary — so  rightly  named— and 
in  wild  carousal.  On  the  morrow  they  made  a  report  and  what 
do  you  think  they  had  the  effrontery  to  write?  That  this  assas¬ 
sination  of  Greeks  may  well  have  been  the  deed  of  a  Greek  band  ! 

I  saw,  on  the  14th  of  March,  at  the  distance  of  only  seven  or 
eight  kilometers,  as  the  bird  flies,  from  the  war  vessels  of  the 
Entente  which  were  there  to  preserve  order,  four  corpses  of 
Greeks  out  of  seven  that  had  been  massacred  that  day.  Three 
had  had  their  throats  cut  so  frightfully  that  their  heads  were 
nearly  separated  from  their  trunks;  the  fourth  was  partially 
charred.  I  started  to  telegraph  at  once  to  one  of  the  Paris 
dailies  an  account  of  what  I  had  just  seen.  My  telegram  was 
ready  to  be  dispatched  but  at  the  last  moment  the  omniscience 
of  our  Quai  d'Orsay,  in  the  person  of  one  of  its  officials,  inter¬ 
vened.  You  cannot  be  ignorant  of  the  fact  that,  as  Robert 
de  Fiers  has  recently  written,  those  who  know,  are  always 
wrong  in  the  sight  of  those  who  are  ignorant,  and  that  the  per¬ 
son  who  is  seated  in  his  armchair  in  Paris  is  evidently  better 
informed  about  things  in  Asia  Minor  than  he  who  tells  of  what 
he  sees  there.  The  oracle  of  the  Quai  d’Orsay  had  decided, 
then,  that  this  was  a  case  of  two  bands  of  comitadjis  who  had 
met  and  of  whom,  he  added,  one  was  no  better  than  the  other. 
In  this  case  the  Greek  band  of  comitadjis  were  represented  by  a 
gathering  of  good  peasants,  men,  women  and  children,  working 
in  their  fields,  none  of  whom  were  armed,  the  women  had  been 
able  to  escape,  a  little  girl  had  been  wounded;  I  had  questioned 
a  boy  of  fifteen  years  who  had  seen  his  uncle  fall  at  his  side;  their 
names  were  all  well  known.  They  were  a  good  sort.  They 
were  Greeks — for  the  Turk  good  hunting.  In  truth,  this 
generation  is  insufferably  arrogant  and  ignorapt;  I  hâve  in 
mind  the  dogmaltic  official  who,  looking  out  on  the  budding 
trees  in  the  Esplanade  des  Invalides,  had  discovered  there  that 
Vasil  Chorva,  father  of  eight  children,  and  massacred  at  the 
age  of  fifty-five  at  Pavlouvrisi,  was  a  chief  of  comitadjis. 

This  is  nothing.  For  you  are  going  to  be  initiated  into 
the  great  bloody  work  of  the  Committee  of  Union  and  Progress. 


20  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 


One  day  there  came  into  the  hands  of  the  representatives 
of  the  Powers  at  Smyrna  two  Turkish  documents  emanating 
from  the  town  of  Aidin.  They  were  sent  in  by  a  young 
Turkish  officer  of  Jugo-Slav  origin  whose  name  I  might  give, 
for  he  is  now  beyond  the  reach  of  reprisals  ;  with  him  the  senti¬ 
ment  of  ràce  spoke,  and  his  conscience  recoiled  before  infamy. 
These  documents  have,  further,  been  authenticated  from 
irrefutable  sources.  They  bear  official  seals.  I  have  had  the 
texts  of  these  documents  examined  by  several  experienced 
translators.  Permit  me  to  set  them  before  you.  Both  are 
dated  February  25,  1919.  The  first  comes  from  the  Com¬ 
mandant  of  the  Gendarmerie  at  Aidin  and  reads  as  follows: 

“To  the  Commandant, 

I  call  your  attention  to  the  disgraceful  conduct  of  the 
Greek  population  toward  the  Turks  during  these  last  few  days. 
We  are  going  to  devote  ourselves  to  the  annihilation  of  this 
vile  people  with  your  aid.  I,  for  my  part,  am  taking  all  the 
necessary  measures  to  this  effect.  In  the  first  place,  I  am 
surrounding  myself  with  numerous  chiefs  of  bands  devoted  for 
several  years  to  brigandage  and  I  am  keeping  them  in  arms 
within  call.  I  have  distributed  guns  to  them.  They,  too,  will 
work  with  you.  Tell  your  comrades  that  in  this  undertaking 
they  will  have  a  chance  to  fill  their  pockets  and  that  for  us 
death  is  not  (to  be  feared)  ;  death  is  only  for  these  base  Greeks. 
As  soon  as  a  little  sign  is  given,  run  at  once  to  annihilate  all 
who  are  in  your  neighborhood.  Do  not  recoil  before  any  act 
against  their  women.  Have  no  regard  for  their  honor.  For 
today  is  the  time  for  vengeance.  Forward  my  children! 

(Signed)  Commandant  of  Gendarmerie  of  the  Central  Battalion 

Mehmet  Arif.” 

On  receiving  this  order,  the  Commandant  evidently  trans¬ 
mitted  it  to  his  subordinates,  and  the  police  captains  fn  the 
various  stations  received  instructions  in  their  turn.  Here  is 
the  second  document: 

“To  the  Commandant  of  the  Central  Station  of  Gendarmerie 
in  Richadie  (the  Greek  quarter  of  Aidin). 

It  appears  from  an  order  of  the  Commandant  that  the  spirit 
of  unrest  and  excitement  among  the  Greeks  has  increased  in 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  21 


these  latter  days.  In  consequence,  when  confronted  by  such 
agitation,  our  country  requires  each  soldier  to  execute  those 
orders  for  a  general  massacre  that  haVe  been  given  him.  Your 
country  gives  you  this  order.  You  must,  then,  sacrifice  even 
your  last  breath  for  her  sake.  Recognize  your  duty.  Each 
soldier  is  expected  to  kill  four  or  five  Greeks.  Commissioned, 
as  I  am,  to  communicate  to  you  in  writing  the  written  order  of 
the  Commandant,  I  shall,  in  my  turn,  personally  give  you 
verbal  instructions  as  to  the  manner  in  which  you  must  act 
in  this  regard.  The  duty  of  every  soldier  is  to  execute  this. 

The  Commandant  of  the  Detachment.”  (Illegible). 

I  have  here  the  photographs  of  these  documents  and  I  gladly 
place  them  at  the  disposal  of  any  who  may  be  familiar  with  the 
Turkish  language.  Which  is  most  repulsive  in  this  order,  its 
licentious  ferocity,  its  cynical  frankness  or  the  crude  ingenu¬ 
ousness  of  its  transmission  in  writing?* 

There  they  were  in  the  very  hands  of  the  French  and  English 
Commissioners  at  Smyrna  and  were  communicated  by  them  to 
the  Commissioners  in  Constantinople.  What  do  you  think 
came  out  of  it  all?  Absolutely  nothing.  No  inquest,  no 
prosecutions,  not  even  any  disciplinary  measures  against  this 
Mehmet  Arif  and  his  accomplices.  Nothing!  They  contented 
themselves  with  informing  Noureddin  that  something  was 
going  on  at  Aidin  and  that  they  were  watching  him;  the  plot 
having  been  exposed,  nothing  actually  happened.  At  Constan¬ 
tinople,  however,  a  little  later,  I  was  discreetly  informed  by 
one  who  was  supposed  to  know,  that  these  papers  were  for¬ 
geries;  they  had  hardly  looked  at  them;  it  was  I  who  told  them 
in  what  manner  they  had  been  authenticated. 

This  was  not  the  worst!  In  handing  over  these  papers, 
the  Turkish  officer  had  revealed  that  at  Aidin,  in  a  certain 
drawer  of  the  desk  of  a  particular  office  which  he  designated, 
they  would  find  abundant  proofs  of  the  definite  and  systematic 
organization  of  the  massacres  and  of  the  connivance  of  the 
highest  Turkish  officials.  A  fine  chance,  was  it  not,  to  catch 
these  wretches,  who  were  making  dupes  of  us,  right  in  their 
lies  and  crimes.  This  was  a  matter  of  the  first  importance. 

*These  documents  will  be  added  to  the  collections  in  the  Institution  of  the 
Library  and  War  Museum  (39  rue  du  Colisée)  where  they  may  be  verified. 


22  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 


Did  they  go  to  Aidin?  Did  they  open  the  drawer?  They  did 
nothing. 

All  the  while  in  the  French  and  English  colonies  at  Smyrna 
organized  efforts  were  being  made  to  defend  the  good  Turks, 
and  you  cannot  tell  me  that  these  were  disavowed  in  high 
places.  Since  in  Asia  Minor,  as  well  as  at  Constantinople, 
Turkophilism  carries  with  it  as  corollaries  Hellenophobia  and 
Armenophobia,  I  will  leave  you  to  imagine  in  what  paradoxes 
the  souls  of  victors  become  entangled,  and  in  what  immorality 
men  who  are  fine  fellows  may  become  involved,  under  color 
of  high  policy,  when  contradictory  notions  are  struggling  for 
the  mastery,  and  when  the  hot  sun  of  the  Orient  has  clouded 
their  clear  understanding. 

Because  the  Greek,  ingenious,  energetic  and  perhaps  also 
keen  in  competition,  shows  himself  jealous  of  the  foreigner, 
you  will  find  business  men  ready  to  declare  that  if  he  gets 
the  upper  hand  they  will  have  nothing  to  do  but  to  pack  up 
their  baggage.  Because  he  is  conscious  through  his  history, 
through  race,  through  numbers  and  through  interests  of  being 
the  legitimate  proprietor  of  these  regions  where  for  five  hun¬ 
dred  years  he  has  been  enduring  the  severest  and  the  most 
killing  domination,  diplomats — or  those  who  constitute  them¬ 
selves  such — accuse  him  of  turbulence  and  fanaticism.  In 
reality  all  the  Greeks  know  and  proclaim  that,  if  deprived 
of  the  political,  financial  and  technical  cooperation  of  the 
foreigner — and  in  particular  of  French  foreigners — they  will 
be  incapable  of  organizing  and  working  territories  which  the 
anarchic  indolence  of  the  Turk  has  left  in  a  state  of  nature, 
and  if  it  happens  that  populations  which  have  for  so  many 
centuries  been  awaiting  deliverance  show  a  little  impatience, 
who  would  not  be  ready  not  only  to  excuse  them  for  this  im¬ 
patience  but  even  to  share  it?  If  there  are  present  any  of  our 
newly  recovered  brothers  of  Alsace  and  Lorraine,  I  know  that 
they  will  understand  me.  To  these  Hellenic  populations  so 
grievously  tried  for  long  centuries,  upon  whom  the  savagery  of 
Talaat  has  brought,  since  1914,  300,000  deaths,  upon  whom  it 
has  in  addition  accumulated  persecution  and  destruction  and 
for  whom  the  announcement  of  the  victory  of  the  Entente  was, 
in  the  night  of  its  mourning,  like  the  apparition  of  a  saving 
labarum,  all  those  who  are  qualified  to  speak  for  them  and 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  23 


direct  them  have  not  ceased  to  exhort  them  freely  to  maintain 
calmness  and  patience.  I  can  testify  that  their  advice  has 
beein;  heard  ;  I  would  even  venture  to  express  the  opinion  that  they 
were  heard  all  too  well  and  that  if,  on  the  morrow  of  the  fall  of 
Turkey,  the  Greeks  of  Constantinople  had  again  taken  posses¬ 
sion  of  St.  Sophia,  which  belongs  to  them,  a  great  sign  would 
suddenly  have  illumined  the  black  sky  with  its  light  and  the 
oriental  problem  would  have  been  simplified. 

In  place  of  this  what  do  we  see?  If  the  Greeks  are  silent, 
people  begin  at  first  quietly  and  then  openly  to  contest  their 
right,  and  learned  men  are  found,  speaking  all  the  languages 
of  their  allies,  who  draw  up  statistics  and  oppose  to  their  just 
claims  the  calculations  of  their  enemies.  If  they  wish  to  speak, 
then  they  are  denounced  as  fanatics.  At  Constantinople  they 
gather  in  their  churches,  where  they  are  by  themselves,  in 
order  to  vote  upon  a  petition;  the  Allied  authorities  accuse 
them  of  adopting  a  provocative  attitude  toward  the  Turks. 
They  credit  them,  without  any  reason,  with  the  intention  of 
celebrating,  by  public  manifestations,  the  anniversary  of  the 
25th  of  March,  which  is  a  religious  feast  day  and  at  the  same 
time  the  national  holiday;  the  Prefect  of  Police  openly  takes 
preventive  measures  of  repression  and  the  publication  of  a 
bulletin  is  tolerated  in  which  he,  a  Turk,  threatens  to  have 
his  soldiers  fire  upon  the  Greeks,  our  allies.  It  is  against  them 
that  the  censorship  is  systematically  exerted.  The  Turkish 
newspapers  are  permitted  to  insult  them  and  avail  themselves 
of  the  opportunity;  the  Greek  papers  are  forbidden  to  reply; 
the  French  papers  are  forbidden,  even  in  theoretical  articles, 
to  manifest  the  most  timid  Philhellenic  tendencies.  At  Smyrna 
the  Allied  Commissioners  refuse  to  transmit  or  even  to  receive 
petitions  in  which  the  oppressed  Greeks  attest  their  desire  for 
a  union  with  the  mother-country.  Three  days  later  they 
accept  and  transmit  appeals  in  which  the  Turks  proclaim  that 
they  will  not  tolerate  the  establishment  of  Greece  in  Asia 
Minor.  The  Metropolitan  of  Smyrna,  Mgr.  Chrysostom, 
in  common  with  the  Greek  community,  organizes  a  thanks¬ 
giving  service  in  the  cathedral  in  honor  of  the  preservation  of 
the  life  of  Clemenceau,  who  had  just  escaped  the  bullets  of  an 
assassin;  the  Commandant  of  the  Italian  warship  is  present 
with  his  officers;  likewise  the  Greek  Commandant;  the  English 


24  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 

are  absent;  the  French  vessel,  Democracy ,  is  represented  by 
two  subalterns.  I  note  these  facts  at  random  as  I  remember 
them.*  When  each  day  is  crowded  with  its  own  events, 
which  appear  organically  connected,  can  one  measure  the  de¬ 
ception  and  bitterness  of  these  tortured  hearts  which  have  put 
all  their  faith  in  us,  or  reckon  what  such  actions  threaten  to 
cost  the  interests  of  France?  And  if  I  add,  without  wishing 
to  insist  on  it,  that  at  Constantinople  the  door  of  General 
Franchet  d’Espérey  was  almost  the  only  one  cordially  and 
sincerely  opened  to  the  anxious  appeal  of  the  Greeks,  you 
will  perhaps  understand  me  in  part. 

It  was  well  that  Greek  troops  eventually  took  possession  of 
Smyrna  and  the  vilayet  of  Smyrna  on  May  15th  last  (1919). 
According  to  all  witnesses  it  had  long  been  necessary  to  thwart 
the  evil  designs  of  the  Turks  and  to  put  an  end  to  their  bloody 
aggressions.  It  is  not,  however,  generally  known  that  an  offer 
of  the  Greek  Government  to  suppress  all  this  brigandage  by 
policing  this  region  had  been  previously  rejected,  and  that,  in 
order  that  a  spontaneous  demand  should  at  this  time  be  made 
upon  Greece,  circumstances  had  to  arise  about  which  I  must 
be  permitted  to  keep  silence,  circumstances  in  which  the  anx¬ 
iety  to  bring  the  Turk  to  his  senses  played  only  a  secondary 

part. 

*The  first  Allied  vessel  that  appeared  at  Smyrna  after  the  armistice  was  an 
English  man-of-war  under  the  orders  of  Commandant  Dickson.  At  once  Creek 
Smyrna  was  all  agog.  With  cries  of  joy  there  was  a  rush  to  the  very  edges  of  the 
vast  stone  quays.  Hands  were  stretched  out  toward  the  vessel,  flags  were  waved 
and  England,  the  Allies  and  Greece  were  acclaimed,  as  well  as  that  Providence 
which  had  at  last  vouchsafed  that  supreme  joy,  awaited  for  long  generations. 
When  the  first  English  sailor  set  foot  on  land,  they  carried  him  m  triumph,  as 
if  the  Paleologos  in  his  triumphal  galley  had  come  back  from  the  dark  ages.  It 
was  a  moment  of  complete  intoxication,  an  intense  and  solemn  hour  tor  the  op¬ 
pressed  people  of  this  second  Alsace.  And  yet  that  very  evening  at  midnight 
Commandant  Dickson  landed  and  roused  the  Metropohtan,  the  political  as  well 
as  religious  head  of  the  Greek  community,  and  in  a  few  dry  phrases,  told  him  to 
see  to  it  that  the  Greeks  from  now  on  kept  silence  under  penalty  of  forced  re¬ 
pression.  On  the  next  day,  a  signed  proclamation  reiterated  m  harsh  and  threat¬ 
ening  terms  the  verbal  instructions  that  the  Admiral  had  given  m  person,  and 
ordered  that  the  Greek  colors  draped  at  the  windows  should  be  taken  down  at 
once.  A  profound  feeling  of  desolation  succeeded  the  joy  of  the  evening  before. 
A  Madame  Psaltof,  a  patriotic  Greek  said  confidentially  to  me:  We  had  wept 
with  joy,  but  we  then  shut  outselves  up  in  our  houses,  we  drew  the  shades  and 
wept  in  our  distress.”  Did  we  French  at  Strasburg  dream  of  punishing  the  dear 
little  Alsatian  girls  for  the  crime  of  shouting  “Vive  la  France!” 

The  same  Commandant  Dickson,  a  little  later  boxed  the  ears  oi  a  Greek 
correspondent  who  was  responsible  for  having  sent  to  Athens  the  text  of  a  docu¬ 
ment  which  did  not  please  him. 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  25 


I  intended  at  this  point  to  tell  in  full  the  story  of  an  edify¬ 
ing  conversation  that  I  had  somewhere  in  the  Orient  with  a  very 
high  French  official.  But  time  is  passing  and  I  must  be  con¬ 
siderate  of  the  benevolence  with  which  you  have  been  good 
enough  to  listen  to  me.  I  carried  away  from  this  interview — or 
rather  from  two  interviews — a  feeling  of  bitterness  and  irri¬ 
tation  which  you  would  share  if  I  had  the  time  to  read  to  you 
the  ten  pages  of  an  exact  procès  verbal  which  I  drew  up  at  once. 
Since  I  am  not  an  informer  by  trade,  I  refrain  from  every  indi¬ 
cation  as  to  the  office  held  by  my  interlocutor  or  the  place 
where  I  visited  him.  I  will  simply  tell  you  that  he  occupied  a 
very  high  position  and  that  if  I  remember  his  evil  ideas  it  is 
because  they  had,  on  his  lips,  a  peculiar  importance. 

Here  was  an  official  personage,  charged  with  the  duty  of 
keeping  the  Government  which  accredited  him,  well  informed, 
who  began  by  telling  me,  contrary  to  all  truth,  that  Turkish 
public  opinioh  was  swinging  toward  us,  that  the  Committee  of 
Union  and  Progress  was  every  day  losing  its  power,  and  that  the 
liberal  parties  had  won  the  upper  hand,  although  he  could  not 
help  being  aware  that  the  people  who  are  today  in  power  can 
maintain  themselves  only  behind  the  bayonets  of  the  Allies, 
and  although  their  power  is  in  reality  so  weak  that  only  yes¬ 
terday  the  English,  by  one  of  those  authoritative  acts  which  are 
habitual  with  them  and  which  we  imitate  only  too  rarely, 
suddenly  placed  on  board  a  vessel  bound  for  Malta  a  whole 
gang  of  young  Turks  for  whom  the  courts  of  Constantinople 
did  not  appear  to  have  impartial  enough  justice  or  prisons 
with  doors  sufficiently  secure. 

But  this  is  only  incidental;  the  scandal  and  immorality  con¬ 
sist  in  the  sudden  release  of  a  wave  of  Turkophilism  which  carries 
with  it  as  a  corollary,  according  to  the  rules  of  the  game,  a  de¬ 
grading  accumulation  of  suspicions  and  calumnies  not  only 
against  the  Hellenic  populations  of  the  Ottoman  Empire  but 
even  against  the  Greek  nation  itself.  For  the  Turks  all  confi¬ 
dence  is  shown,  but  for  the  Greeks  all  kinds  of  rancor  and  dis¬ 
trust.  Permit  me  not  to  be  more  precise.  My  interlocutor  for¬ 
got  that  it  was  only  the  fault  of  the  Entente  which  prolonged 
the  abject  reign  of  Constantine,  that  the  Greece  of  Venizelos 
took  its  place  in  the  combat  during  the  dark  days  when  the 
collapse  of  Russia,  the  crushing  of  Rumania  and  the  German 


26  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 

victories  at  the  Somme  might  have  made  us  doubt  our  future. 
He  forgot,  too,  that  the  victorious  operations  in  Macedonia 
would  have  been  impossible  in  1918  without  the  cooperation  of 
the  Greek  army.  Above  all  he  forgot  that,  in  spite  of  all  the 
shortcomings  of  the  Entente,  which  was  haggling  about 
money,  equipment,  arms  and  transportation,  the  Provisional 
Government  of  Salonika  had  thrown  in,  at  the  side  of  the  Allies, 
an  army  of  65,000  volunteers,  that  is  to  say,  a  proportion  of  sol¬ 
diers  which  for  France  would  have  given  400,000  men.  He 
also  denied  the  existence  of  Philhellenism  and  pretty  nearly 
that  of  Hellenism  itself,  adding  that  he  saw  in  the  Orient  not  a 
people  which  demanded  its  rights  but  restless  and  envious 
spirits  which  were  constantly  “squalling.”  He  said  to  me: 
“How  do  you  make  it  out  that  Smyrna  is  Greek? ”  The  num¬ 
ber  of  the  Greeks  in  Constantinople  bothered  him  a  little;  but 
what  does  the  protest  of  350,000  citizens  amount  to  in  com¬ 
parison  with  the  interests  of  a  financial  company?  The  daily 
assassinations  in  Asia  Minor  did  not  trouble  him  at  all  and  I 
should  be  ashamed  to  quote  the  expression  he  used  in  this  con¬ 
nection.*  For  the  rest,  adopting  the  infamous  report  of  the 
Turkish  police,  to  which  I  have  alluded  above,  he  did  not  hesi¬ 
tate  to  say  to  me  that  these  numbers  of  Greeks  slain  might 
perhaps  be  the  victims  of  Greek  assassins.  I  stop  here  for  you 
already  know  enough,  but  I  should  be  wronging  this  gentle¬ 
man  if  I  permitted  you  to  believe  that  his  love  for  the  Turk 
makes  him  jealous  only  of  the  Greek.  The  Armenian,  too, 
came  in  for  his  share.  I  reproduce  here  textually  the  expres¬ 
sion  which  his  self-sufficiency  deigned  to  give  to  my  incompe¬ 
tence:  44 1  was  present  at  some  of  the  Armenian  massacres; 
those  massacred  were  in  the  wrong.” 

What  can  we  think  of  such  language?  And  what  a  pity  that 
France  can  be  thus  represented  in  this  Orient,  where,  in  cha¬ 
otic  minds,  the  most  childish  credulity  exists  alongside  of  the 
cleverest  cunning!  Do  those  who  govern  us  realize  that  they 
have  been  betrayed? 

For  they  have  been  betrayed  and  that  is  the  worst  of  it.  All 
this  equivocal  policy  is  not  their  doing.  All  the  while  that,  there 

*  Among  other  statements  which  I  was  compelled  to  listen  to  that  day  I 
will  only  give  the  following:  “Oh  these  Greeks!  If  one  could  only  hang  every 
mother’s  son  of  them.” 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  27 

in  the  East,  financiers,  officials,  diplomats,  and  many  French 
and  English  officers  holding  fat  jobs  under  Turkish  corrup¬ 
tion,  Italian  expansionists,  Levantines  of  all  classes  and  all 
shades  of  morality  are  exerting  themselves  to  organize  the 
safety  of  the  Ottoman  Empire  and  are  letting  their  imagina¬ 
tion  play  about  countless  combinations  of  controls,  mandates  or 
protectorates,  here  in  Paris,  at  the  table  where  the  Great 
Powers  are  deliberating,  Turkey  stands  condemned,  and  con¬ 
demned  more  for  its  incapacity  than  for  its  crimes.  Sentence 
has  been  passed  and  nothing  justifies  us  in  fearing  that  it  can 
be  revoked.*  I  made  use  of  the  words  immorality  ”  and 
“scandal.”  This  immorality  consists  in  entering  into  machin¬ 
ations  which  are  destined  to  draw  Europe  into  the  Mohammedan 
mire  in  order  thus  to  save  the  Turk.  The  scandal  is  that  such 
manœuvers  are  carried  on  against  the  will  of  the  Entente  gov¬ 
ernments  and  even,  so  I  would  like  to  believe,  without  their 
knowledge. 

5|c  *  ^ 

Why  have  I  insisted  on  saying  all  this?  Was  it  to  gratify 
a  doubtful  curiosity  and  perhaps  to  gain  some  cheap  applause? 
The  present  is  no  time  for  idle  talk  and  those  who  know  me  will 
not  believe  me  capable  of  this.  It  was  for  two  or  three  very  sim¬ 
ple  reasons: 

I  should  not  be  allowed  to  publish  these  statements.  This 
country  which  calls  itself  free  and  which  perhaps  thinks  that  it 
possesses  the  spirit  and  habit  of  liberty,  tolerates  this  dishon¬ 
oring  censorship,  which  the  English  and  Americans  have  long 
since  done  away  with,  a  censorship  which  suppresses  not  only 
the  information  which  is  fully  spread  forth  in  the  newspapers 
of  our  allies,  but  even  the  very  criticism  of  the  facts.  French 
public  opinion  knows  nothing  of  what  is  taking  place  in 
France,  to  say  nothing  of  its  ignorance  of  what  is  said  or  printed 

*This,  which  was  true  at  the  moment  that  I  said  it,  was  not  true  two  days 
later.  To  such  a  degree  do  the  decisions  of  the  “Big  Four”  vacillate  and  waver. 
And  yet  what  reply  did  the  Allies  make  on  January  10,  1917  to  President  Wilson 
who  had,  in  the  name  of  the  United  States,  which  was  then  a  neutral,  interrogated 
them  as  to  their  aims  in  the  war?  In  a  common  note  signed  by  the  English  as 
well  as  by  the  Italians,  they  wrote  that  victory  signified  for  them  “the  liberation 
of  the  populations  that  had  been  subject  to  the  bloody  tyranny  of  the  Turks  and 
the  exclusion  of  the  Ottoman  Empire  from  Europe  as  being  utterly  foreign  to  all 
occidental  civilization.”  Victory  has  come.  Is  it  not  the  time  for  each  to  honor 
his  signature  and  irrevocably  to  confirm  the  judgment  of  history. 


28  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 

beyond  its  borders;  it  knows  nothing  of  what  is  being  prepared, 
and  nothing  of  the  deadly  consequences  that  are  to  be  appre¬ 
hended.  Parliament,  which  is  kept  at  a  distance,  is  no  better  in¬ 
formed  than  the  people  at  large.  Both  submit  to  this  censor¬ 
ship  and  piously  say  “Amen”  to  this  satrapie  régime.  They 
are  amorphous. 

The  result  is  that  sabotage  of  our  victory  is  threatened  from 
all  quarters.  The  old  Germanophile  party  in  England  has 
raised  its  head  and  is  working  with  all  its  might.  The  safety  of 
Germany  has  been  championed  by  a  large  part  of  the  Italian 
people,  and  a  great  journal  such  as  the  Corriere  della  Sera  dares 
to  write  that  for  France  to  strike  down  Germanism  is  tanta¬ 
mount  to  embroiling  her  with  Italy . 

Throughout  the  world  of  our  Allies  who  are  those,  then,  who 
dare  today  to  speak  for  our  enemies,  the  Germans,  the  Turks 
and  the  Bulgarians?  Let  us  tear  off  the  masks  and  speak 
frankly.  On  the  one  hand  they  are  the  revolutionaries  who 
deceive  themselves  into  thinking  that  they  can  employ  for  the 
renovation  of  society  and  the  establishment  of  universal  justice 
the  most  wickedly  retrogressive  power  in  the  whole  world,  and 
who,  while  imagining  that  they  are  using  Germany  for  their 
own  ends  are  actually — I  doubt  not,  unconsciously  acting  as 
the  tools  of  German  intrigue  and  Russian  Bolshevism,  that  is 
to  say,  as  tools  of  Germany. 

In  the  second  place  comes  what  is  even  more  hateful  and 
dangerous — the  hidden  cabal  of  international  finance  which, 
before  the  war,  by  the  piling  up  of  causes  for  conflict,  during  the 
war,  by  dealings  on  the  sly  with  the  enemy  and  by  manœuvers 
calculated  to  enervate  the  powers  of  resistance  and  foster  the 
feelings  of  pessimism  on  the  part  of  the  weak,  and  since  the  war, 
by  desperate  efforts  to  which  it  has  devoted  itself  in  the  chan¬ 
cellories,  in  the  press,  and  everywhere  in  fact,  has  not  ceased  to 
look  out  for  its  own  interests,  for  its  free-masonry  of  appetites, 
and  always  against  the  national  interest  and  the  interest  of  the 
peoples  who  are  trying  to  free  themselves  and  obtain  justice. 
Was  it  for  this — for  the  peace  of  financiers — that  all  these  peo¬ 
ples  shed  their  blood?  Was  it  for  the  pallid  peace  of  revolu¬ 
tionaries,  under  which  conquerors  and  conquered  would  find 
themselves  cast  back  into  the  same  misery,  that  we  pursued  the 
war,  enduring  all  its  cruel  sacrifices?  I  still  hear,  ringing  in  my 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  29 

ears,  the  heartrending  appeal  of  that  noble  Armenian,  Mr. 
Tigran  Tcheyan,  who,  in  a  voice  breaking  with  emotion  said  to 
me  at  Constantinople:  “We  demand  that  a  distinction  be 
made  between  the  victims  and  their  assassins.” 

This  barbarous  war  is  dominated  by  a  fact  that  escapes  these 
people,  a  fact  that  is  not  written  down  in  the  account  of  repa¬ 
rations,  the  tabulations  of  raw  materials,  or  the  tracing  of  fron¬ 
tiers.  What  makes  it  unique  in  the  history  of  mankind  is  that 
it  imposes  on  the  world  a  question  of  conscience.  Never  has  it 
been  so  profoundly  true  that  the  present  works  for  the  future. 
The  intrigues  and  cabals  of  the  traditionlal  diplomats  have  had 
their  day.  The  policy  of  quid  pro  quo,  of  compromises  and  bar¬ 
gaining  must  be  ended.  The  great  democracies  have  had 
enough  of  these  haggling  methods.  We  have  seen  them  em¬ 
ployed  at  the  Congress  of  Vienna,  and  at  those  of  Paris  and 
Berlin.  The  world  knows  what  the  cost  in  blood  has  been  of  the 
subtle  stupidities  of  so  many  talented  men.  We  have  seen  them 
in  operation  from  1914-1917  in  these  Balkans,  where  the  augurs 
of  the  Entente,  by  their  failure  to  walk  in  the  light,  have  inces¬ 
santly  stumbled.  It  is  not  from  the  greed  of  financial  interests, 
in  Turkey  and  in  Bulgaria,  nor  from  the  egoism  of  private  in¬ 
terests  in  Smyrna  and  Constantinople,  nor  from  religious  propa¬ 
gandists  in  Turkey  and  Syria — these  propagandists  who,  even 
in  the  very  hour  of  victory,  gambled  with  us  for  the  safety  of 
Catholic  Austria — no,  it  is  neither  from  appetites  nor  from  reli¬ 
gious  beliefs  that  we  must  ask  directions  for  the  world  of  to¬ 
morrow.  Apart  from  the  plain  and  straight  road  there  are  only 
traps  and  ambushes.  The  first  benefit  of  the  peace  will  be  to 
oppose  its  barrier  of  brass  to  future  wars.  How  can  this  be  done 
if  with  our  own  hands  we  undertake  to  restore  the  abettors  of 
the  war  of  yesterday? 

There  are  today  here  in  France  people  blind  enough  to  take 
pity  on  Germany  and  to  exact  from  us  pardon  and  benevolence. 
By  what  paradox  can  we  call  what  we  judge  to  be  pernicious 
here,  wisdom  and  cleverness  in  the  Orient  ?  Are  we  going  to 
forget  that  we  have  there  faithful  allies,  for  whom,  in  the  his¬ 
tory  of  the  past,  Turkey  and  Bulgaria  were  so  many  Ger¬ 
mâmes?  Shall  we  judge  proper  against  them  acts  that  we  would 
judge  indecent  toward  ourselves?  Can  we  possibly  permit  them 


30  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 

to  have  the  feelings  toward  Berlin  that  too  many  of  our  agents 
or  compatriots  have  for  Sofia  and  Constantinople? 

H:  $  $  $  $ 

But  permit  me  to  say,  in  closing  what  has  been,  I  fear,  too 
long  a  discourse,  that  it  is  not  a  matter  of  propriety  alone. 

The  Oriental  Question  was  started  in  1774  on  the  day  when 
the  armies  of  Catherine  II.  crossed  the  Danube,  and  the  fleet 
of  Alexis  Orloff  came  and  threatened  Mustapha  III.  in  the 
Golden  Horn,  and  it  has  never  ceased,  since  that  time,  to  poison 
Europe.  It  will  be  settled  on  that  day  when  the  successor  of 
Mohammed  II.  will  be  sent  to  Asia  and  the  Ottoman  Empire 
reduced  to  the  Kingdom  of  Turkey.  The  great  convulsion  has 
caused  the  hour  to  sound.  Shall  we,  adding  a  new  fault  to  our 
others,  adjourn  the  day  of  fate? 

He  whom  Nicholas  I.,  if  I  mistake  not,  called  the  “Sick  Man” 
is  on  his  deathbed.  Shall  we,  with  our  own  hands  administer 
the  elixir  of  life? 

In  1875  Lord  Derby  said:  “We  have,  by  the  treaty  of  Paris, 
guaranteed  that  he  be  not  killed;  but  we  were  unable  to  guar¬ 
antee  that  he  would  not  commit  suicide.”  He  has,  himself, 
passed  the  strangling-cord  that  William  II.  offered  him  around 
his  own  neck.  Shall  we,  acting  against  the  interests  of  peace, 
against  our  own  interests  and  against  historic  destiny,  unknot 
this  cord? 

I  remember  this  true  saying  of  the  economist,  Yves  Guyot, 
one  of  those  men  who  are  not  satisfied  by  mere  words  but  are 
in  the  habit  of  considering  facts  as  facts:  “If  so  many  efforts 
had  not  been  made  to  keep  him  so  long  alive,  we  should  prob¬ 
ably  have  escaped  tlie  present  war.”  * 

How  many  attempts  have  been  made,  either  rough  or  cordial, 
to  galvanize  him,  to  arouse  him,  to  give  him  a  semblance  of  nor¬ 
mal  existence!  All  the  efforts  at  reform  have  failed.  Tan- 
zimat,  Hatti-Houmayoun,  Constitution  of  Midhat-Pasha, 
Macedonian  Reforms,  Constitution  of  1908,  not  to  mention 
abortive  attempts,  false  semblances  and  mystifications.  Such 
as  Europe  knew  him  in  1453,  such  the  Turk  has  remained. 
His  whole  history  is  a  history  of  cunning,  persecution,  mas- 

*Les  Causes  et  les  Conséquences  de  la  Guerre,  by  Yves  Guyot  (Félix  Alcan, 
1916). 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  31 


sacre,  outrage  and  war.  On  the  soil  that  he  has  occupied  by 
arms,  he  leaves  neither  monument  nor  invention,  neither  lit¬ 
erature,  art,  nor  industry;  nothing  that  remotely  resembles  a 
civilization.  He  remains  the  Conqueror,  his  only  virtues  being 
for  conquest,  living  only  upon  the  labors  of  those  he  oppresses, 
being  the  least  capable  of  improvement  and  the  least  assimi¬ 
lable  of  all  the  people  on  earth.  With  the  temperament  of 
a  slave,  submissive  to  force,  and  only  imposing  himself  on 
others  through  force,  he  is  an  “anti -man,”  according  to  the  ter¬ 
rible  judgment  of  Gladstone,  as  far  as  all  the  works  of  peace 
and  prosperity  are  concerned,  but  a  man,  withal,  or  rather 
a  wild  beast,  for  the  works  of  war  and  desolation.  He  has 
gained  his  victories  by  war;  let  him  perish  then  by  war,  since 
this  is  his  destiny. 

There  are  enlightened  Turks.  Some  of  them  I  know  and  es¬ 
teem.  These  are,  however,  exotic  plants  that  flourish  on  the 
morass  of  the  race.  I  have,  on  several  occasions,  spoken  to 
some  of  them  to  this  effect: 

It  is  not  the  war  that  Turkey  has  waged  against  us  that  con¬ 
demns  her,  nor  is  it  the  massacres.  The  war  is  an  accident  of 
history,  from  which  she  could  redeem  herself,  for  France  might 
find  a  way  to  pardon  her.  The  massacres  are  barbaric  practices 
from  which  she  might  free  herself.  No,  it  is  not  this.  It  is 
the  crushing  fact  that  in  five  centuries  of  domination  she  has 
been  able  neither  to  govern  herself  nor  to  establish  a  civili¬ 
zation,  nor  to  find  a  stable  system  of  law  for  the  peoples  she 
has  subjected,  nor  to  make  herself  acceptable  to  them. 

It  is  the  fact  that  the  Turk  is  nothing  but  a  Mussulman; 
that  he  has  no  other  law  than  the  religious  law  of  the  Cheri\ 
that  the  Cheri ,  the  holy  book,  is  unchangeable  and  incapable 
of  being  improved;  that  it  teaches  him,  along  with  a  total  scorn 
for  those  who  do  not  share  his  beliefs,  the  futility  of  all  human 
effort,  and  an  abject  submission  to  fate.  It  is  the  fact,  too. 
that  he  remains  a  nomad  and  that  for  him  family  life  does  not 
exist.  This  renders  him  alike  refractory  to  all  political  and 
to  all  social  life. 

When  the  free-masons  and  the  donmes  of  Salonika,  counter¬ 
feiting  the  Occident,  proclaimed  the  equality  of  races  in  the 
Empire,  the  equality  of  individuals  before  the  law,  the  recon¬ 
ciliation  of  the  citizens  of  all  classes  of  society,  what  a  mockery 


32  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 

it  was,  for  there  existed  neither  society  nor  law,  in  our  sense 
of  the  words.  Recall  this  significant  fact.  The  revolution¬ 
aries  of  1908,  masters  of  the  Empire,  adopted  our  republican 
motto  with  which  to  decorate  their  buildings  and  their  station¬ 
ery.  “Liberty”  was  the  word  that  was  their  talisman; 
“Equality!”  Yes!  That  word  they  must  utter;  but  “Frater¬ 
nity!”  How  talk  of  fraternity  to  this  supreme  and  chosen 
people,  for  whom  there  is  no  life  save  in  the  bosom  of  Islam, 
and  who  know  the  Christians,  the  Jews,  and  all  non-Moslems, 
oiijy  under  the  name  of  rayas ,  that  is  to  say,  cattle?  In  their 
secret  council-chambers  the  matter  was  long  discussed.  “Fra¬ 
ternity”  was  condemned  and  “Justice”  a  word  that  bound 
them  to  nothing,  was  written  in  its  place. 

It  does  bind  us  to  something,  however. 

We  have  fought,  suffered  and  bled  for  a  just  peace. 

A  just  peace  means,  in  the  first  place,  to  oppress  no  man’s 
conscience;  it  is  this  principle  that  we  are  working  to  establish. 
Shall  the  conquerors  tolerate  among  the  conquered  what  they 
forbid  to  their  own  people?  When  all  the  people  of  Europe  are  to 
be  liberated,  shall  we  leave  beneath  the  knee  of  the  most  ferocious 
of  oppressors  those  who  have  bled  most  deeply?  A  just  peace 
means  to  restore  Constantinople  to  Europe,  to  give  Bulgaria 
to  the  Bulgarians  alone,  and  Turkey  to  the  Turks  alone.  Let 
there  be  no  fiction  of  a  control  or  a  protectorate,  for  these 
would  be  arbitrary  and  equivocal.  Let  there  be  open,  fair  and 
just  solutions.  Liberty  for  the  Armenians  as  well  as  for  the 
Greeks,  without  restrictions  or  subterfuges,  liberty  for  each 
and  every  man,  be  he  friend  or  foe,  but  liberty  within  the 
limits  of  his  rights,  and  with  all  regard  for  the  rights  of  his  neigh¬ 
bor.  Liberty  and  justice  make  eternal  appeal  to  the  human 
conscience.  From  a  just  peace  will  come  that  real,  that  grand 
peace,  the  name  of  which  the  world  has  just  written  in  blood. 

On  that  day  when  the  Padishah  shall  set  up  his  begemmed 
throne  on  the  Asiatic  plateau,  when  the  Cross,  the  symbol  of 
the  law  of  the  ages,  rises  above  Saint  Sophia,  the  peace  of  the 
Orient  will  be  secure. 

Let  us  remember  that  the  war  rose  out  of  the  East.  If  the 
monster  shall  once  more  come  up  over  the  world,  it  will  be  the 

East  that  will  have  given  it  birth. 

» 


SMYRNA —A  GREEK  CITY 


By  Charles  Vellay 

After  long  discussion,  the  varied  turns  of  which  it  is  here 
useless  to  recall,  Smyrna  and  the  region  about  it  appear  to 
have  been  definitely  detached  from  Turkey  by  the  decision  of 
the  Great  Powers,  in  order  to  be  placed  under  the  control  of 
Greece.  Thus  we  see  realized,  at  least  partially,  that  one  of  the 
revendications  of  Mr.  Venizelos  on  which,  in  the  Memorandum 
presented  by  him  to  the  Peace  Congress  at  the  end  of  1918,  he 
insisted  most  forcibly,  when  after  having  shown  the  dangers 
of  any  experimenting  with  an  autonomous  state  in  Western 
Asia  Minor  he  claimed  for  his  country,  by  all  the  rights  which 
history,  culture,  geographical  and  economic  conditions  justify, 
the  province  of  Aidin  and  a  part  of  that  of  Broussa.  Even  if 
Greece  in  the  last  analysis  is  forced  to  accept  a  zone  much 
more  restricted  than  this — a  solution  to  be  deeply  regretted  on 
many  accounts — there  is  no  doubt  that  the  inclusion  of  Smyrna 
in  this  zone  gives  her  an  invaluable  prize  and  suffices  to  explain 
the  bitter  rivalries  that  have  arisen  as  to  this  strip  of  Turkey. 

Historical  arguments  have  time  and  again  been  invoked 
in  order  to  demonstrate  the  Hellenic  character  of  Smyrna. 
Without  underestimating  the  value  of  these  arguments  we 
must  certainly  admit  that  states  of  today  cannot  possibly  be 
recast  on  the  basis  of  history  and  that  in  those  regions  where  a 
given  power  has  in  the  past  reigned,  it  conserves  rights  only  in 
the  measure  that  its  race,  its  language  and  its  national  con¬ 
sciousness,  all  that  constitutes  its  ethnic  vitality,  continue  to 
maintain  themselves  with  sufficient  force.  If  Greek  culture 
and  a  Greek  population  had  no  longer  existed  in  Smyrna,  the 
diplomats  would  have  made  short  shrift  of  Greece’s  claims, 
and  the  glorious  name  of  Homer  would  have  been  powerless 
to  defend  the  illustrious  Ionian  metropolis  against  the  cold 
realities  of  international  politics. 


33 


34  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 

But  even  the  most  stubborn  enemies  of  Greece  have  never 
been  able  to  contest  the  fact  that  there  is  in  Smyrna  and 
throughout  the  western  coasts  of  Asia  Minor,  a  flourishing  and 
tenacious  Hellenism  which  no  persecution,  and  no  amount  of 
oppression  or  propaganda,  has  ever  been  able  entirely  to  destroy . 
The  successive  shocks  of  1770,  1797  and  1821,  though  external 
to  Smyrna,  roused  bloody  echoes  over  there  from  which  Hellen¬ 
ism  suffered  grievously,  but  from  which  she  rallied  each  time 
with  greater  discipline  and  will.  Thus,  in  1914,  when  the  Euro¬ 
pean  War  broke  forth  and  the  future  of  Turkey  was  at  stake, 
the  voice  of  the  Greeks  of  Asia  Minor  was  raised  with  a  force 
which  could  not  be  stifled  and  to  which  in  a  greater  or  less 
degree  the  world  was  forced  to  listen.  In  vain  were  stratagems 
multiplied  to  pervert  the  decisions  of  the  Conference.  At 
times  the  effort  was  made  to  excite  the  uneasiness  of  the  Great 
Powers  by  picturing  the  predominance  of  Greek  commerce 
in  Smyrna  if  this  city  became  a  part  of  Greece,  and  the  dis¬ 
astrous  consequences  of  this  for  the  interests  of  the  other 
European  nations.  Again  it  was  affirmed  that  the  Greek 
populations  of  Asia  Minor  did  not  really  desire  to  be  annexed 
to  Greece,  but  dreamed  rather  of  autonomy  under  a  regen¬ 
erate  Turkey,  or  of  some  independent  constitution.  These 
arguments,  which  were  circulated  in  order  to  harass  the  west¬ 
ern  governments  and  which  did  at  times  distract  their  atten¬ 
tion,  have  ended  by  vanishing  away  into  thin  air  before  the 
inflexible  and  exact  demands  of  Asiatic  Hellenism. 

On  the  twelfth  of  March,  1919,  at  the  time  when  the  Peace 
Conference  was  discussing  their  fate,  the  Greeks  of  Smyrna 
sent  to  the  High  Commissioners  of  England,  France,  America, 
Italy  and  Greece  at  Constantinople  the  following  telegram: 
“It  has  come  to  our  attention  that  doubts  have  been  conceived 
as  to  whether  the  sentiments  and  desires  of  the  Greek  people 
in  Asia  Minor  have  been  sufficiently  and  effectively  manifested 
concerning  the  settlement  of  their  fate.  Consequently  we, 
the  lawful  representatives  of  the  people  of  Smyrna  and  of  the 
Orthodox  Christian  population  of  this  province,  consider  it 
our  supreme  duty  to  declare  to  the  Commissioners  and  through 
them  to  their  respective  governments  that  the  ardent,  profound 
and  unshaken  desire  of  Unredeemed  Hellenism  in  Asia  Minor 
is,  purely  and  simply,  their  union  with  Greece.’ 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  35 

At  the  same  time  the  Metropolitans  of  Smyrna,  Ephesus, 
Philadelphia,  Heliopolis  (Aidin),  Sokia,  Pisidia  and  Adalia, 
after  a  conference  held  at  the  seat  of  the  Metropolitan  in 
Smyrna,  sent  to  the  same  Commissioners  a  long  memorandum, 
which  it  would  be  out  of  place  to  cite  in  its  entirety  here,  but 
from  which  some  passages  may  well  be  repeated  : 

“Hellenism  in  Asia  Minor,”  they  state,  “energetically  re¬ 
jects  any  other  solution  than  its  union  with  Greece.  It  is 
flourishing  Greek  culture  which  will  assure  the  progress  and 
development  of  the  country.  The  Greek  populations  of  Asia 
Minor,  by  their  sufferings  under  Turkish  persecutions,  and 
by  their  valor  on  the  field  of  battle,  have  acquired  the  right 
to  full  and  complete  liberty.  All  foreign  penetration  of  our 
land,  under  any  form  whatsoever,  would  be  disastrous.  We 
claim  with  all  our  strength  the  entire  unity  of  the  Greek 
national  and  geographical  heritage  through  union  with  Greece, 
and  we  guarantee  order  and  prosperity  to  the  country  without 
distinction  of  race  or  religion.  Any  other  solution  will  only 
result  in  prolonging  our  martyrdom.” 

Again,  after  recalling  the  ancient  glory  of  Ionia,  and  dwell¬ 
ing  on  the  cruel  persecutions  to  which  its  inhabitants  were 
subjected  during  five  centuries  of  Turkish  domination,  they 
enumerate  the  sufferings  endured  by  the  Greeks  of  Asia  Minor 
in  the  course  of  the  war. 

“During  this  World  War  we  have  had  our  interminable  black 
book,  which  can  hardly  contain  the  tale  of  all  the  destruction 
that  even  the  Turks  make  no  effort  to  conceal,  the  premeditated 
massacres,  the  floggings,  the  murders  en  masse,  the  hecatombs 
of  the  labor  battalions,  the  outraging  of  girls,  the  desecration  of 
the  churches,  the  forcible  conversions  of  children  to  Moham¬ 
medanism,  the  assaults  on  the  honor  of  the  family  and  the 
home,  and  thousands  of  other  unheard  of  crimes,  conceived, 
prepared  and  methodically  executed  against  the  unhappy 
Christians.” 

Finally  their  memorial  ends  with  the  following  entreaty: 
“In  return  for  all  that  precedes,  for  the  incalculable  services 
rendered  to  civilization,  to  which  it  contributed  ancient  Greek 
philosophy  and  the  pure  dogmas  of  Christianity,  for  all  that  it 
has  suffered  for  nearly  five  centuries,  for  all  that  it  still  feels 


36  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 

strong  enough  to  accomplish  for  the  civilization  of  the  Orient, 
for  its  unshaken  faith  in  its  own  restoration,  Hellenism  in  Asia 
Minor,  forming  one  body,  one  soul,  one  voice,  rises  with  one 
accord  against  the  Turkish  tyranny  which  constitutes  a  blot  on 
modern  civilization,  and  demands  of  the  great  saviors  and  pro¬ 
tectors  of  the  free  nations  its  union  with  free  Greece,  that  the 
source  of  its  age-long  tortures  may  be  at  last  dried  up.” 

What  is  this  Hellenism,  so  alive  and  so  passionate?  What 
does  it  represent  in  the  country  as  a  whole?  What  is  its  share 
in  the  intellectual,  moral  and  economic  life  of  Smyrna?  What 
is  its  title,  what  are  its  rights?  I  do  not  pretend  here  to  give 
a  complete  answer  to  all  these  questions,  but  I  have  been 
witness  in  Smyrna  to  various  manifestations  of  this  Hellenic 
leaven.  In  the  most  varied  circles,  and  oftentimes  in  those 
most  hostile  to  Hellenism,  I  have  questioned  the  persons  who 
could  enlighten  me  on  this  point,  and  from  this  most  searching 
and  impartial  investigation  I  content  myself  here  with  drawing 
the  most  obvious  of  conclusions,  which  can,  in  no  possible  way, 
be  disputed. 

The  Ottoman  Government  has  never  been  able,  nor  has  it 
ever  wished,  to  establish  any  exact  ethnographic  statistics.  We 
must  not,  however,  reproach  it  too  harshly,  for  any  census  of 
this  nature  meets,  in  Turkey,  with  almost  insurmountable 
difficulties.  Races,  languages  and  religions  are  inextjricably 
mingled,  and,  according  as  we  take  an  ethnic,  linguistic  or  reli¬ 
gious  point  of  view,  we  reach  results  which  have  nothing  in 
common  and  which  permit  contradictory  conclusions.  In  cer¬ 
tain  villages  of  Asia  Minor,  Greek  populations  have,  in  the 
course  of  centuries,  gradually  adopted  the  use  of  the  Turkish 
language,  and  at  times  the  customs  of  the  Mussulman  religion, 
while  all  the  time  conserving  an  ardent  Hellenic  patriotism. 
Furthermore,  some  Mohammedan  populations  know  only  the 
Greek  language.  Lastly,  the  application  of  the  Capitulations, 
through  the  privileges  thus  gained,  has  caused  certain  elements 
to  pass  over  to  the  ranks  of  this  or  that  nationality  to  which 
they  were  otherwise  not  at  all  related.  In  the  last  analysis 
it  is  the  religious  statistics  on  which  one  is  most  inclined  to 
depend,  for  in  spite  of  their  variations  they  appear  less  subject 
to  change  and  confusion. 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  37 

During  the  war  the  Government  bureaus  of  Smyrna  under¬ 
took  to  draw  up,  with  all  possible  precision,  statistics  of  the 
population  of  the  city.  These  statistics,  which  were,  I  believe, 
never  published,  since  their  object  was  to  meet  the  needs  of  the 
military  police,  may  be  considered  as  nearest  the  truth,  for  they 
bear  no  taint  of  diplomatic  arguing  or  of  religious  polemics. 
According  to  these  statistics  the  population  of  Smyrna  is  thus 
made  up:  150,000  Greeks,  110,000  Turks,  15,000  Armenians, 
10,000  Jews,  and  about  15,000  foreigners.*  We  see  by  these 
figures  that,  even  on  the  basis  of  Turkish  authorities,  not  only 
do  the  Greeks  form  the  most  important  constituent  part,  but 
that  they  come  very  near  to  having  an  absolute  majority,  for 
they  practically  counterbalance  all  the  other  elements  taken 
together.  We  must  further  take  account  of  the  fact  that 
among  the  protégés  or  nationals  of  the  European  nations  a  cer¬ 
tain  number  of  Greeks  are  to  be  found  who,  though  classed  as 
French,  English,  Italian  or  Russian  subjects,  remain,  never¬ 
theless,  obstinately  faithful  to  their  Hellenic  traditions  and  birth. 

While  the  “Levantine”  population  lives  by  preference  out¬ 
side  of  the  city,  especially  in  the  more  aristocratic  quarters, 
Cordelio  and  Bournabat,  and  the  Mohammedans  are  almost 
exclusively  massed  on  the  slopes  of  Mount  Pagus,  where  is  to 
be  found  also  the  Jewish  quarter,  the  Greek  inhabitants  occupy 
all  the  lower  city,  including  the  maritime  and  trade  centres, 
with  the  exception  only  of  some  sections  of  the  Bazaar.  The 
traveler  who  disembarks  at  Smyrna  enters  immediately  into 
contact  with  a  Greek  city;  the  only  language  that  he  hears 
about  him  is  the  Greek;  the  natives  with  whom  he  enters  into 
relation  are  Greeks,  and  if  circumstances  do  not  lead  him  to  a 
narrower  search,  he  will  go  away  with  nothing  but  the  impres¬ 
sion  of  having  seen  in  Smyrna  a  Greek  city,  where  some  Turkish 
functionaries  of  the  custom  house  or  the  palace  are  all  that  make 
one  think  of  an  absent  master. 

Because  of  its  numerical  importance  the  Greek  population  of 
Smyrna  does  not,  as  is  the  case  in  other  Mohammedan  cities, 
restrict  its  activities  to  certain  trades.  Here  the  Greeks  are 
everywhere,  from  the  porter  of  the  quay  to  the  great  landed 
proprietor,  from  the  humble  artisan  to  the  doctor,  the  lawyer, 

♦As  to  Turkish  statistics  see  Appendix  II,  p.  51. 


38  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 

the  banker  and  the  ship  chandler.  In  each  of  these  classes, 
bound  to  each  other  by  a  strong  moral  discipline,  vibrates  the 
same  Greek  patriotism,  the  same  dream  of  national  unity,  the 
same  co-ordinated  and  patient  effort.  There  do  not  exist  be¬ 
tween  them  those  quarrels  and  lines  of  cleavage  so  familiar  in 
the  countries  of  the  west.  All  work  together  at  the  same  task, 
in  the  same  spirit,  with  the  same  self-abnegation  and  with  a 
sentiment  of  equality  which  brings  them  together,  unites  them 
and  blends  them. 

If  we  wish  to  see  Hellenism  in  Smyrna  expressing  itself  in  all 
its  spontaneous  activity  we  must  pass  the  courtyard  of  the 
Metropolitanate,  ascend  the  steps  of  the  Bishop’s  palace,  and 
enter  the  hall  where  the  Metropolitan  himself  receives,  each 
morning,  all  those  who  have  need  of  his  help.  It  is  difficult  to 
forget  the  curious  spectacle  of  this  room  filled  with  a  crowd  of 
petitioners  of  all  sorts,  rich  and  poor,  who  come  there  as  to  a 
refuge  that  is  always  open.  There  is  no  formality.  An  usher 
or  two  are  there  for  the  simplest  services.  People  enter  without 
being  formally  announced.  The  crowd  besieges  the  prelate,  but 
no  one  turns  away  without  being  able  to  present  his  request  and 
obtain  an  answer.  For  the  Metropolitan  listens  to  everybody, 
busies  himself  with  everything  from  the  most  serious  matters 
down  to  the  most  humble  details.  On  the  day  that  I  came  to 
see  him  some  little  children’s  shoes  were  lying  on  his  desk  and 
formed  the  subject  of  very  lively  discussion.  It  was  a  question 
of  selecting  a  model  for  distribution  among  the  Greek  refugees 
driven  out  of  the  interior  of  Asia  Minor  by  the  persecutions  of 
the  Turks.  The  Metropolitan  did  not  regard  it  as  beneath  his 
dignity  to  busy  himself  with  such  a  minor  matter,  for  in  the 
domain  of  charity  the  importance  of  a  question  is  not  measured 
by  its  nature  so  much  as  by  the  good  that  may  result  from  it. 

On  this  day,  furthermore,  there  was  an  especial  stir  in  the 
prelate’s  bureau.  A  delegation  of  peasants  of  Boudja,  with  a 
priest  at  their  head,  had  come  to  report  to  him  the  murder  of 
seven  Greek  peasants,  taken  by  surprise,  and  massacred  on  their 
farms  by  a  band  of  those  Turkish  soldiers,  who,  though  recently 
discharged,  have  retained  their  arms  and  are  used  for  exploits 
of  this  nature.  These  tragic  incidents  have  become  so  frequent 
that  there  are  to  be  found  in  Smyrna,  so  the  Metropolitan  told 
me,  no  fewer  than  five  hundred  orphans  whose  parents  have 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  39 

been  killed  by  the  Turks.  All  these  sorrowing  people  come  to 
the  Metropolitan  for  consolation.  But  it  is  not  only  religious 
consolation  that  they  ask  and  receive.  It  is  in  the  last  analysis 
the  great  patriotic  dream  which  best  comforts  these  tortured 
souls  and  nourishes  within  them  the  hope  of  a  future  of  liberty 
and  justice. 

Under  a  vigorous,  patient  and  methodical  impelling  force  the 
laborious  achievements  of  the  Greeks  of  Smyrna  attest  the 
vitality  of  a  race  which  has  never  lost  faith  in  its  destiny. 
Schools,  hospitals,  orphan  asylums,  dispensaries,  activities  of 
every  nature  are  so  many  witnesses  of  this  constant  and  varied 
effort.  All  this  draws  its  support  solely  from  the  gifts  of  the 
Orthodox  community  which,  by  its  inexhaustible  spirit  of  soli¬ 
darity,  meets  all  demands  upon  it,  undertakes  everything  and 
assures  the  prosperity  of  each  of  its  numerous  organizations. 

In  order  to  understand  to  what  point  this  feeling  of  soli¬ 
darity  reaches,  and  to  appreciate  how  each  Greek  of  this  large 
city  realizes  his  duty  toward  his  brothers,  one  may  consult, 
for  example,  the  last  report  of  the  trustees  of  the  Hospital  of 
Saint  Charalampos,  which  is  the  chief  Greek  hospital  in 
Smyrna.  This  report  covers  the  period  from  March  1,  1914 
to  February  28,  1917,  which  was  almost  entirely  a  period  of 
war,  that  is  to  say  a  time  when  individual  resources  have  been 
to  a  marked  degree  reduced,  when  the  ordinary  activities  of 
life  have  been  most  disturbed,  and  Hellenism  in  Asia  Minor 
from  a  general  standpoint  most  menaced  and  compelled  to 
dissimulate  its  zeal.  Now,  even  in  this  time  of  misery  and 
uncertainty,  all,  from  the  richest  to  the  most  humble,  were  con¬ 
tributing  their  share.  In  the  long  list  of  donors  is  a  gift  of  50,000 
piasters  ($2,300)  along  with  gifts  of  6,  7  or  8  piasters  ($.30- 
$.40),  which  represent  perhaps  an  equal  sacrifice  and  one  just  as 
deserving  of  praise.  Apart  from  these  money  gifts,  gifts  in  kind 
are  even  more  touchingly  eloquent.  In  this  other  list  we  find 
mentioned  a  few  okes  of  oil,  or  of  milk,  a  lamb,  some  eggs, 
and  some  cotton.  Beans,  potatoes,  cheese,  vinegar,  raisins, 
wheat,  wine,  olives,  soap,  potash,  alcohol,  chloroform,  quinine, 
cognac,  plates,  slippers,  jars,  needles,  anything  that  is  of  the 
slightest  use,  figure  in  this  list  of  donations,  and  the  account  is  so 
well  kept,  with  such  meticulous  exactness,  that  even  a  modest 
gift  of  two  dozen  matches  is  scrupulously  recorded. 


40  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 

With  its  four  hundred  beds,  its  annual  expenses  of  10,000 
Turkish  pounds  ($46,000),  with  its  wards  for  surgery,  pathology, 
gynecology,  ophthalmology,  mental  maladies,  its  maternity 
department,  its  old  peoples’  asylum,  this  Greek  hospital  of 
Smyrna  of  which  the  unwearied  Dr.  Psaltoff  is  the  active  soul, 
is  one  of  the  organizations  most  indicative  of  Hellenic  initiative. 

I  give  here  some  figures  covering  this  same  period  (1914-1917), 
figures  which  are  far  below  the  average  of  the  times  before 
the  war,  for  since  then  a  part  of  the  hospital  has  been  requisi¬ 
tioned  by  the  military  authorities  and  this  has  reduced  the 
efficiency  of  the  hospital  by  nearly  a  half. 

From  the  1st  of  March,  1914,  to  the  28th  of  February,  1915, 
the  entrance  of  1,801  patients  was  recorded  and  this,  added  to 
the  300  patients  already  in  the  hospital  at  that  time,  gives  a 
total  of  2,101  persons  that  were  treated  during  this  twelve- 
month.  Out  of  this  total  of  1,801  entering,  all  were  not  Greeks, 
for  the  hospital  is  open  to  all  confessions  and  to  all  nationalities. 
Thus  for  this  year  we  find,  along  with  1,702  Greek  Orthodox, 
71  Mussulmans,  12  Jews,  8  Armenians,  6  Catholics,  etc.  In 
the  following  year  (1915-1916)  the  total  of  patients  was  1,608, 
and  in  the  third  year  (1916-1917),  2,500,  among  whom  the 
proportions  of  Orthodox,  Mussulmans,  Jews,  etc.,  were  nearly 
the  same  as  in  1914-1915.  To  these  patients  treated  within 
the  hospital  are  to  be  added  the  outpatients  who  were  naturally 
more  numerous;  in  1914-1915,  their  number  was  22,572,  in 
1915-1916,  22,352,  in  1916-1917, 15,841,  making  a  total  for  the 
three  years  of  60,765  of  which  37,922  were  Orthodox,  2,850 
Mussulmans,  1,266  Jews,  349  Catholics,  and  114  Armenians. 

Alongside  of  these  charitable  works  are  to  be  placed  the 
schools.  What  an  important  place  schools  occupy  in  the  pre¬ 
occupations  of  the  unredeemed  Greeks  is  well  known.  It  is 
through  these  that  for  a  century  the  elevation  of  the  Greek 
people  has  so  methodically  taken  place.  It  is  through  their 
schools  that  the  Greek  communities,  lost  sometimes  like  little 
islands  in  the  sea  of  strange  nationalities,  have  maintained 
themselves  and  kept  alive.  It  is  the  schools  that  have  main¬ 
tained  Greek  traditions,  have  kept  up  the  effort  to  attain 
freedom  and  national  unity,  have  supported  the  moral  and 
patriotic  faith  of  the  Greek  world,  triumphing  over  all  obstacles, 
all  persecutions  and  hatreds.  It  is  not  the  place  here  to  recall 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  41 

by  what  disciplined  and  persistent  enthusiasm,  by  what  ob¬ 
stinate  devotion,  these  scholastic  riches  were  accumulated  in 
a  hostile  land.  The  school  formed,  as  it  were,  the  barracks  of 
Hellenism,  the  forge  where  patient  preparation  was  made  for 
the  restoration  of  the  fatherland,  and  each  man  from  his  gifts, 
while  living,  or  his  legacies,  after  death,  felt  it  an  honor  to 
contribute  to  this  great  work  a  part  of  his  fortune.  Could  such 
a  spirit,  which  made  Greek  schools  arise  in  the  smallest  villages 
of  Turkey,  fail  to  manifest  itself  with  a  peculiar  force  in  the  old 
Ionian  capital?  In  fact,  great  though  the  expenses  were  of 
maintaining  its  hospital,  the  Orthodox  Greek  community  of 
Smyrna  devoted  three  times  this  sum  to  its  schools. 

In  1914  the  budget  of  the  School  of  the  Evangel,  the  most 
important  of  the  Greek  schools,  endowed  with  a  magnificent 
library  of  more  than  30,000  volumes,  amounted  to  7,000 
Turkish  pounds  ($32,200)  ;  that  of  the  Central  School  of  Saint 
Photeine  for  young  girls  to  3,000  Turkish  pounds  ($13,800)  ;  that 
of  the  Homerion  School  for  young  girls  to  1,300  pounds  ($5,980)  ; 
that  of  the  district  schools  to  6,000  pounds  ($27,600);  that  of 
the  private  schools  to  3,000  pounds  ($13,800);  and  finally, 
that  of  the  sectional  schools  to  2,000  pounds  ($9,200)  ;  forming 
thus  a  grand  total  of  506,000  francs  ($101,200). 

In  1919  the  figures  are  even  higher  but  it  is  impossible  to 
estimate  them  in  francs  because  of  the  variations  in  exchange. 
If  we  take  into  account  that,  for  the  Greek  community  of 
Smyrna,  the  Turkish  pound  in  paper,  for  interior  exchange, 
keeps  its  nominal  value,  the  difference  between  the  two  budgets 
is  enormous,  for  in  1919  the  expenses  amounted  to  111,000  Turk¬ 
ish  pounds  as  compared  with  20,300  in  1914.  Out  of  this 
111,000  Turkish  pounds  in  paper,*  35,000  went  to  the  School 
of  the  Evangel,  15,000  to  the  Central  School  of  Saint  Photeine, 
6,000  to  the  Homerion  School  for  girls,  30,000  to  the  district 
schools,  15,000  to  the  private  schools  and  10,000  to  the  sectional 
schools. 

What  Hellenism  in  Smyrna  does  for  the  social  and  scholastic 
life  of  the  Greeks  represents  only  a  part  of  its  activity.  The  life 

*At  par  this  would  represent  $510,600  and  this  is  what  it  really  meant  to  the 
people  of  Smyrna.  To  calculate  it  at  the  rate  of  exchange  of  March,  1919,  unfavor¬ 
able  though  it  was,  these  111,000  Turkish  pounds  represent  even  then  $160,000. 
The  Greek  community  of  Smyrna  estimates  at  about  $240,000  the  total  expenses 
of  all  its  educational  establishments. 


42  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 

of  Smyrna  is  after  all  concentrated  in  the  economic  domain. 
Questions  of  a  financial,  industrial  and  commercial  order  occupy 
the  first  place.  It  is  in  this  domain,  therefore,  more  than  in  any 
other  that  Greek  genius  gives  fullest  expression  to  itself,  all 
the  more  because,  in  this  field,  being  forced  to  struggle  against 
a  formidable  foreign  rivalry,  it  has  to  put  forth  an  effort  which  is 
infinitely  more  sustained,  more  varied  and  consequently  more 
meritorious. 

In  the  region  around  Smyrna,  as  in  the  rest  of  Turkey,  great 
industries  are  only  exceptionally  to  be  found.  It  is  above  all 
the  small  industries  that  are  most  fully  developed;  these  do 
not  demand  large  capital,  or  a  numerous  personnel;  they  are 
better  adapted  to  the  local  customs  and  the  geographic  neces¬ 
sities.  In  lack  of  any  official  statistics  a  patient  economist  of 
Smyrna,  Mr.  J.  B.  Yannikis,  has  recently  undertaken  a  method¬ 
ical  census  of  the  industrial  establishments  of  Asia  Minor,  dhe 
results  of  his  inquiry,  which  have  been  rigorously  tested,  are 
as  yet  unpublished,  but  he  has  been  good  enough  to  communi¬ 
cate  the  results  to  me  and  I  have  drawn  from  them  some  inter¬ 
esting  facts  as  to  Smyrna  and  its  suburbs. 

This  ‘Greater  Smyrna’  includes  391  factories.  Of  these 
344  are  Greek,  14  are  Turkish,  3  Armenian,  9  Jewish,  5  French, 
6  English,  1  Belgian,  3  Italian,  1  American,  3  Austrian  and  2 
German.  The  great  numerical  superiority  of  the  Greek 
factories  would  be  more  overwhelming  yet,  if  the  fact  could 
be  taken  into  account  that  the  factories  classed  as  Turkish  are 
generally  only  apparently  such,  for  they  are  usually  operated 
under  Greek  direction  and  with  a  Greek  personnel. 

If  one  wishes,  further,  to  multiply  such  points  of  comparison, 
the  predominance  of  the  Greek  element  in  the  industry  of 
Smyrna  is  constantly  evidenced.  Of  a  total  of  6,787  horse¬ 
power  utilized  as  motive-force  for  the  391  factories  of  this 
region,  the  Greek  factories  absorb  3,725  and  the  remainder  is 
distributed  as  follows:  20  horse-power  in  the  Turkish  factories, 
52  in  the  Jewish,  31  in  the  French,  1,742  in  the  English,  850 
in  the  single  Belgian  factory,  12  in  the  Italian,  95  in  the  Ameri¬ 
can,  235  in  the  Austrian  and  25  in  the  German. 

The  same  proportions  are  to  be  observed  if  we  study  the 
number  of  workmen  and  other  employees:  4,584  workmen 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  43 

and  485  clerical  employees  in  the  Greek  establishments;  115 
workmen  and  4  clerks  in  the  Turkish  factories;  12  workmen 
and  2  clerks  in  the  Armenian,  127  workmen  and  13  clerks 
in  the  Jewish,  113  workmen  and  10  clerks  in  the  French; 
1,062  workmen  and  25  clerks  in  the  English,  520  workmen 
and  8  clerks  in  the  Belgian,  70  workmen  and  5  clerks  in  the 
Italian,  20  workmen  and  2  clerks  in  the  American,  53  work¬ 
men  and  11  clerks  in  the  Austrian  and  32  workmen  and  3 
clerks  in  the  German. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  their  real  value,  calculated  on 
the  cost  of  installation,  the  Greek  factories  represent  a  value  of 
1,035,795  Turkish  pounds,  gold  ($4,764,657),  while  all  the 
other  factories,  taken  together,  do  not  amount  to  more  than  a 
total  of  394,320  Turkish  pounds  ($1,813,872). 

As  far  as  production  is  concerned,  Greek  houses  maintain 
their  superiority  over  their  rivals.  They  produce  annually 
127,800,000  kilograms  of  wheat  flour  out  of  a  total  of  139,200,- 
000,  the  Austrian  mills  being  their  only  rivals  and  they,  longo 
intei'vallo,  for  they  produce  11,400,000  kilograms  annually. 
Out  of  a  total  of  37,440,000  kilograms  of  raisins  the  portion 
produced  by  the  Greek  houses  is  28,440,000,  the  rest  coming 
from  the  French,  English,  Italian,  German  and  Jewish  houses. 
Finally,  as  to  all  the  products  other  than  flour  and  raisins,  the 
output  of  the  Greek  factories  represents  a  value  of  3,560,550 
Turkish  pounds,  gold  ($16,378,530),  while  that  of  all  the  other 
factories  combined  does  not  surpass  700,215  pounds  ($3,220,989) . 

We  see  by  these  figures  that  the  industrial  supremacy  of 
the  Greek  factories  of  Smyrna  is  absolute,  for  in  each  category 
they,  taken  alone,  perceptibly  surpass  all  their  rivals  counted 
together.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  such  statistics  have  not 
been  drawn  up  for  the  commercial  houses  and  that,  as  to 
them,  we  are  forced  to  rely  on  less  precise  considerations. 
Certainly  none  of  those  who  have  visited  Smyrna  and  have 
stayed  there  any  length  of  time,  can  deny  that  all  the  small 
commerce,  retail  stores,  hotels,  cafés,  groceries,  dry  goods 
stores,  bookstores,  etc.,  are  exclusively  in  the  hands  of  the 
Greeks.  But  although  we  can  have  no  doubt  that  the  Greeks 
predominate  in  internal  commerce  and  trade,  we  are  far  less 


44  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 

certain  as  to  foreign  trade  or,  at  any  rate,  as  to  the  export  of 
indigenous  products,  for,  as  to  the  importation  of  foreign  goods, 
the  preponderance  of  the  Greek  houses  admits  of  no  discussion; 
the  supplying  of  all  the  Greek  shops  of  Smyrna,  its  suburbs  and 
the  surrounding  country  with  European  goods  would  suffice 
to  maintain  this  superiority. 

For  a  long  time  this  exportation  business  which  was  based  on 
the  old  system  of  sending  the  goods  on  consignment,  remained 
in  the  hands  of  the  Greek  houses  of  Smyrna.  Later,  when 
European  merchants  came  to  Smyrna  and  organized  more 
modern  methods,  in  particular  the  system  of  selling  on  samples, 
Greek  commerce,  being  unable  to  adapt  itself  so  suddenly  to 
new  exigencies,  suffered  an  eclipse.  Today  the  ground  lost 
has  been  in  part  regained.  Greek  merchants  are  too  clever 
not  to  adopt  a  method  which  has  assured  the  success  of  their 
rivals  and,  at  present,  their  part  in  the  total  export  business 
of  Smyrna  is  becoming  more  considerable  from  year  to  year. 
The  time  is  not  far  distant  when  they  will  have  regained  the 
leadership  of  former  days. 

We  may  observe  an  analogous  phenomenon  in  another 
branch  of  trade;  that  of  the  representation  of  foreign  houses. 
Here,  too,  the  Greeks  had  been  left  far  behind  by  the  agents  of 
European  houses.  Twenty  years  ago,  out  of  300  foreign 
commercial  representatives  or  agents  of  factories  established 
in  Smyrna,  there  were  only  15  or  20  Greeks.  Since  then  the 
proportion  has  been  considerably  modified  in  consequence  of 
a  systematic  effort  which  deserves  to  be  briefly  explained, 
because  it  permits  us  to  understand,  in  a  particularly  clear 
case,  the  qualities  of  perseverance  and  solidarity,  which  are 
among  the  most  permanent  characteristics  of  the  Greek  race. 

This  change  was  due  to  the  support  of  the  great  Greek  banks 
(the  Bank  of  Mitylene,  the  Bank  of  the  Orient  and  the  Bank 
of  Athens),  whose  branches  in  Smyrna,  established  during  these 
last  25  years,  naturally  took  in  hand  the  cause  of  their  com¬ 
patriots.  Up  to  that  time  the  foreign  banks  systematically 
favored  the  other  indigenous  elements,  so  that  the  Greeks, 
deprived  of  ‘references’  could  not  hope  to  obtain  the  privilege 
of  representing  western  business  houses.  As  soon,  however, 
as  the  Greek  banks  came  to  their  aid  and  furnished  them  with 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  45 

the  necessary  references,  thus  accrediting  them  with  the  great 
exporting  houses  of  Europe,  a  new  future  opened  itself  out  to 
them  and  they  entered  upon  this  branch  of  trade  with  success. 

At  the  same  time  they  took  account  of  what  they  lacked  in 
commercial  training  along  this  line.  We  see  them  entering 
into  a  real  apprenticeship.  They  developed  the  study  of 
foreign  languages,  especially  of  French,  which  is  the  current 
language  of  commercial  exchange  in  the  Orient,  but  also  of  Eng¬ 
lish,  German  and  Italian.  They  organized  excursions  to 
Europe  in  order  to  study  on  the  spot  commercial  customs  and 
methods,  to  secure  personal  relations,  and  to  bring  back  precious 
lessons.  The  result  has  been  that  in  this  branch  of  commerce 
from  which  they  were  twenty  years  ago  almost  totally  excluded, 
they  have  acquired  an  undeniably  important  place,  from 
which  it  will  not  be  easy  to  dislodge  them. 

If  we  wish  to  extend  these  observations  to  the  region  around 
Smyrna  and  to  the  neighboring  cities,  we  shall  reach  similar 
conclusions.  For  in  agriculture,  in  spite  of  the  unfavorable 
attitude  of  the  Ottoman  government,  the  Greeks  have  come 
to  play  a  rôle  which  is  not  to  be  despised,  and  although  it  is  a 
fact  that  they  form  only  a  minority  among  the  great  rural  pro¬ 
prietors,  it  is  they,  generally  speaking,  who  assure  the  function¬ 
ing  and  the  prosperity  of  agricultural  exploitation.  The  war 
has  furnished  a  decisive  proof  of  this,  for  upon  the  deportation 
of  the  Greeks  into  the  interior,  all  cultivation  came  to  a  stop, 
neither  the  Turks  who  remained  in  the  villages,  nor  the  mo- 
hadjirs*  having  been  able  or  willing  to  carry  on  this  work. 
I  have  received,  as  to  this  point,  a  testimony  that  can  not  be 
suspected  of  partiality  toward  the  Greeks,  that  of  the  Turkish 
Governor  of  Tchesme.  This  region,  one  of  the  richest  in  the 
vicinity  of  Smyrna  was,  when  I  was  there,  at  the  end  of  March 
1919,  in  a  state  of  the  utmost  desolation.  No  trade,  no 
agriculture,  the  fields  fallow,  the  vineyards  destroyed,  the 
orchards  abandoned,  the  fig-trees  ravaged  and  the  houses  in 
ruins.  Why?  Simply  because  the  Greeks  had  gone  and  the 
Turks  could  not  fill  their  places.  “It  was  the  Christian 
element,”  the  Governor  told  me,  “that  made  the  fortune  and 

^Mussulman  immigrants  brought  in  by  the  Turkish  Government  from  the 
provinces  of  Bosnia-Herzegovina,  Macedonia  and  Western  Thrace,  and  installed 
in  the  coast  regions  in  place  of  the  deported  Greeks. 


46  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 

prosperity  of  Tchesme.  Now  everything  is  dead  and  every¬ 
thing  will  have  to  be  begun  all  over.” 

And  everything  will  arise  again;  it  will  be  begun  all  over. 
It  will  be  necessary  to  replant  the  vines  and  the  olive  orchards, 
to  rebuild  the  houses,  to  reorganize  the  commerce  and  to  fill 
up  the  gaps  that  the  persecutions,  deportations  and  epidemics 
have  made  in  the  population  of  this  unhappy  country.  If  only 
the  inhabitants  are  allowed  to  settle  once  more  in  their  villages, 
under  a  régime  of  guaranteed  liberty,  the  future  will  be  assured 
and  prosperity  will  speedily  return. 

At  Chios,  on  the  hills  that  dominate  the  little  town,  great 
barracks  have  been  constructed  for  the  families  of  the  refugees. 
These  have  come  from  the  shores  of  Asia  Minor,  especially  from 
Tchesme,  and  there,  from  morning  till  evening,  in  mute  con¬ 
templation,  their  heads  veiled  in  mourning,  they  look  across 
the  narrow  channel,  and  see  brightly  gleaming  in  the  sunshine 
the  land  from  which  they  have  been  exiled  for  more  than  four 
years.  This  land  ought  to  recall  to  them  only  servitude  and 
suffering.  But  it  is  their  land,  the  land  of  their  fathers,  of 
their  ancestors,  of  thirty  centuries  of  Hellenism.  If  they  are 
separated  from  it  by  some  kilometers  of  sea,  their  eyes  at  least 
never  leave  it.  In  vain  has  the  attempt  been  made  to  trans¬ 
port  them  to  continental  Greece.  They  have  resisted  all  solici¬ 
tation,  all  injunctions,  for  there,  at  least,  as  long  as  they  can 
see  the  shores  of  their  home  country,  they  seem  really  not  to  have 
left  it.  It  is  a  singularly  moving  sight,  this  crowd  of  unfort¬ 
unates  who  turn  their  fevered  eyes,  lit  with  a  mystic  patriotism, 
toward  this  land  of  Asia,  so  near  and  yet  so  far,  where  so  many 
evils  have  always  threatened  them  but  which  they  love  never¬ 
theless  with  such  fervor  that  at  times,  in  the  darkness  of  night, 
some  of  them,  unable  longer  to  resist  the  attraction  which 
draws  them,  break  away  from  surveillance  and  against  orders 
steal  away  on  frail  boats  to  revisit  their  homes,  to  touch  the 
crumbled  walls,  even  though  they  must  thus  fall  into  the  hands 
of  their  enemies. 

Sights  like  these  enable  us  to  measure  the  profound  strength 
and  the  mysterious  virtue  of  Hellenism.  On  this  soil  of 
Smyrna,  where  flourished  the  greatest  genius  of  ancient 
Greece,  the  bonds  of  history  have  unsuspected  power.  “They 
reproach  us,”  said  a  young  Greek  woman  of  Smyrna,  “for  not 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  47 

having  participated  in  the  war  long  enough  to  deserve  the  reali¬ 
zation  of  all  our  prayers.  But  our  war,  our  war,  I  say,  has 
lasted  for  five  centuries. ”  And  it  is  true!  For  five  centuries 
this  Greek  population  has  been  living  in  the  hope  of  deliverance 
and  with  such  trembling  between  hope  and  fear  that  it  has 
seemed  to  it  that  the  Turkish  conquest  was  but  of  yesterday. 
How,  then,  can  we  wonder  at  the  species  of  delirium  which 
took  possession  of  Smyrna  when,  on  the  morrow  of  the  armis¬ 
tice,  a  Greek  torpedo-boat  entered  the  harbor.  The  crowd 
wept,  kneeled  before  the  sailors,  kissed  their  hands  and  their 
very  feet,  and  bore  them  in  triumph  along  the  quay.  More 
recently  yet,  when  the  Greek  cruiser  Averoff  was  sent  to 
Smyrna  to  stay,  the  same  enthusiasm  broke  forth,  “Never”, 
said  a  Turkish  newspaper  in  Smyrna,  “have  so  many  and  so 
large  Greek  flags  been  raised;  they  were  as  large  as  the  ‘ Grand 
Idea \  From  the  windows  of  the  houses  they  reached  almost 
to  the  ground.  Sail-boats,  yawls,  and  rowboats  ceaselessly 
carried  thousands  of  people  of  all  classes  to  the  vessel.  Men, 
as  well  as  women  and  children,  covered  with  kisses  the  legend¬ 
ary  boat  and  caressed  it  with  their  cheeks  in  order  the  better 
to  feel  its  presence.”  Finally,  we  have  all  heard  in  the  midst 
of  what  indescribable  manifestations  the  debarkation  of  the 
Greek  expeditionary  force  took  place,  the  force,  I  mean,  that 
was  ordered  by  the  Powers  to  occupy  Smyrna  and  a  part  of 
its  vilayet. 

One  may  dispute  as  to  the  limits  of  Asiatic  Hellenism,  as 
to  the  strength  of  its  penetration,  as  to  the  reasons,  geographic, 
economic,  or  political  which  make  for  or  against  its  destinies; 
but  if  there  is  in  all  Asia  Minor  a  city  the  Hellenic  character 
of  which  can  not  be  disputed,  and  which,  all  through  the  vicis¬ 
situdes  of  the  ages  has  been  able  to  keep  its  national  traditions 
intact,  it  is  certainly  Smyrna.  This  with  its  crown  of  Greek 
cities  from  Cydonia  to  Ephesus  represents,  there  on  the  Aegean, 
the  first  cradle  of  Greek  civilization. 


APPENDIX 

I 

Letter  to  Le  Temps  on  the  Economic  Future  of  Smyrna 

{Published  May  10,  1919) 

Smyrna,  April  1919. 

At  the  moment  when  an  appeal  is  to  be  made  to  the  Peace 
Conference  to  decide  definitely  upon  the  fate  of  Asia  Minor 
and  especially  as  to  that  of  the  province  of  Aidin,  which  has 
already  occasioned  so  many  disputes,  I  should  like  briefly  to 
recapitulate  here  for  the  readers  of  Le  Temps,  the  conclusions 
to  which  a  searching  investigation,  carried  on  at  Smyrna,  has 
led  me. 

It  is  well  known  that  Greece  claims  the  annexation  of  the 
entire  province  of  Aidin  with  the  sole  exception  of  the  sanjak 
of  Denizli,  where  the  Mohammedan  element  has  the  decided 
preponderance.  The  Great  Powers  have,  up  to  the  present, 
taken  quite  different  attitudes  toward  this  claim.  Some  have 
formulated  objections  of  a  geographic  or  economic  nature. 
Others,  though  favoring,  in  principle,  the  Greek  contention, 
propose  to  reduce  quite  considerably  the  territorial  zone  which 
would  be  given  to  Greece  and  which,  according  to  their  plan, 
would  begin,  in  the  north,  at  the  Gulf  of  Adramyttium  and 
would  end,  toward  the  south,  near  Hieronda,  opposite  the 
island  of  Samos. 

To  examine  and  discuss  each  of  these  arguments  would 
evidently  take  us  too  far  afield.  I  will  therefore  limit  myself 
to  certain  statements  which  deal  more  or  less  completely  with 
the  economic  objections. 


48 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  49 


Can  the  province  of  Smyrna,  as  Greece  demands,  be  sepa¬ 
rated,  administratively  and  politically,  from  the  rest  of  Asia 
Minor,  or  is  this  separation  bound  to  produce  economic  con¬ 
sequences  dangerous  alike  for  the  port  of  Smyrna  and  for  the 
interior  of  the  Anatolian  peninsula  ? 

Anyone  who  will  take  the  trouble  to  make  an  impartial 
investigation  on  the  spot,  will  carry  away,  I  believe,  the  same 
impression  as  I  did.  Not  only  would  the  commerce  of  Smyrna 
not  suffer  from  such  a  political  separation,  but  it  would  find 
on  the  contrary,  paradoxical  as  it  may  seem,  a  new  element  of 
activity.  I  have  consulted  at  Smyrna  the  statistics  of  the 
Chamber  of  Commerce  and  those  of  different  commercial 
organizations;  I  have  studied  the  movements  of  importation 
and  exportation,  the  amount  as  well  as  the  classification  of  the 
merchandise,  the  places  of  origin  and  the  destination  of  these 
goods;  and  I  have  found  that  the  commerce  of  Smyrna  is 
nourished,  to  the  extent  of  75%,  by  the  province  of  Aidin  alone. 
The  rest  of  Asia  Minor  furnishes  only  25%  and  the  goods  thus 
feebly  represented  are  for  the  most  part  imports.  Even  if 
one  admits,  therefore,  that  the  port  of  Smyrna  might  lose  a 
part  of  this  traffic,  the  only  result  would  be  a  relative  better¬ 
ment,  to  its  advantage,  of  the  balance  of  trade.  But  the 
governmental  régime  of  the  hinterland,  no  matter  how  hostile 
one  may  suppose  it  to  be,  could  never  break  off  entirely  its 
economic  relations;  the  railroads  and  the  caravan  routes  fix 
the  itineraries  of  trade  exchanges,  and  we  must  not  forget  that 
Smyrna  is  the  only  port  of  all  Asia  Minor  which  is  adequately 
equipped  to  satisfy  the  needs  of  maritime  commerce.  Any 
change  in  government  would  be  a  change  for  the  better  from 
present  conditions,  which  are  truly  lamentable.  The  province 
of  Aidin  is  very  rich,  but  agriculture  under  a  Turkish  adminis¬ 
tration  meets  with  insurmountable  difficulties.  Suppress  the 
present  administration  and  you  do  away  with  the  difficulties. 
Just  as  soon  as  this  fertile  region  recovers  order  and  peace, 
its  production  will  be  such  that  the  commerce  of  Smyrna  will 
there  find  at  once  an  inexhaustible  source  of  activity  and 
profit  which  will  more  than  compensate  for  what  it  may  lose 
in  other  ways. 


50  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 


For  the  same  reasons,  and  as  a  consequence  of  these  very 
observations,  the  economic  situation  of  the  interior  of  Asia 
Minor  will  not  be  disturbed  by  this  proposed  political  separa¬ 
tion.  We  have  just  seen  that- the  commerce  of  the  interior 
vilayets  with  that  of  Aidin  is  unimportant.  How  can  any 
measure  whatsoever,  then,  injure  it,  since  it  is  already  reduced 
to  a  figure  lower  than  which  it  does  not  seem  likely  to  go? 

The  truth  is  that  the  vilayet  of  Aidin  from  the  geographic, 
and  economic  point  of  view,  constitutes  a  sort  of  distinct  zone 
which  has  its  own  individual  life  and  which  may  suffice  to  it¬ 
self  without  demanding  anything  of  the  neighboring  vilayets. 
This  was  proven  in  the  course  of  the  war,  when  Rahmi  Bey,  by 
giving  this  vilayet  a  sort  of  temporary  administrative  autonomy, 
could  assure  to  all  the  population  the  necessary  resources,  with¬ 
out  exporting  anything  it  is  true,  but  also  without  importing 
anything.  The  only  question  which  deserves  consideration 
is  that  of  wheat  production,  for  it  is  in  the  sanjak  of  Denizli 
that  the  wheat  fields  are  found.  Local  public  opinion,  in 
Smyrna,  as  well  as  in  the  rest  of  the  vilayet,  protests  against 
the  separation  of  this  sanjak  which,  in  spite  of  the  undeniable 
preponderance  there  of  the  Mussulman  element,  should  from 
the  economic  point  of  view,  follow,  so  it  seems,  the  fate  of  the 
other  sanjaks. 

But  what  is  true  of  the  sanjak  of  Denizli  is  still  more  true 
of  the  other  parts  of  the  vilayet  of  Aidin.  If  it  is  undeniable 
that  this  vilayet  can,  without  any  disadvantage,  be  detached 
from  Turkey  in  Asia  in  order  to  be  united  with  Greece,  it  is  on 
the  express  condition  that  it  shall  not  be  cut  up,  or  arbitrarily 
divided,  and  that  it  shall  keep  intact  its  geographic  physi¬ 
ognomy  and  its  administrative  frontiers.  If  we  believe  that 
the  commerce  of  Smyrna  has  nothing  to  fear  from  a  decision 
such  as  that  which  Greece  requests  from  the  Peace  Conference, 
it  is  because  we  have  in  view  the  attribution  to  Greece  of  the 
entire  vilayet.  To  reduce  the  Hellenic  zone  to  a  meagre  band 
along  the  coast,  not  extending  beyond  the  Gulf  of  Hieronda 
and  not  extending  inward  more  than  eighty  kilometers,  is 
actually  to  create  the  danger,  which  they  are  trying  to  avoid, 
and  to  give  occasion  to  unrest  which  would  otherwise  not  exist. 

If  the  Conference  wishes  to  act  in  a  safe  and  sane  manner, 
it  will  refuse  to  cut  up  this  part  of  Asia  Minor  which  constitutes 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  51 

a  perfectly  homogeneous  whole,  but  will  leave  to  it  that  unity 
which  has  been  caused  by  the  profound  influences  of  history. 
It  will  thus  avoid  creating,  on  the  west  coast  of  Anatolia,  a 
narrow  zone  which  will  live  with  difficulty  and  will  have  neither 
political  nor  military  security.  No  matter  at  what  point  of 
view  one  places  himself,  the  territory  of  Greece  in  Asia  Minor 
must  extend  as  far  south  as  Castellorizo,  unless  one  is  willing, 
by  too  timid  measures,  to  compromise  the  interests  and  the 
future  of  a  population  which  has  suffered  much  in  the  past, 
but  which  carries  within  itself  all  the  qualities  and  resources 
requisite  to  cause  the  civilization  of  olden  days  to  flourish  again 
in  this  New  Ionia. 

Charles  Vellay. 


II 

Letter  to  Le  Temps  on  Turkish  Statistics 
(. Published  July  3,  1919 ) 

The  Central  Committee  of  the  Society  for  the  Defense  of 
Ottoman  Rights,  which  is  only  a  poorly  disguised  reconstitution 
of  the  Committee  of  Union  and  Progress,  with  the  object  of 
impressing  the  Peace  Conference,  has  had  printed  and  dis¬ 
tributed  a  “Comparative  Chart  of  the  Populations  of  the 
Vilayet  of  Aidin,”  which  deserves  some  attention,  for  more 
than  any  other  document  does  it  reveal  the  strange  state  of 
mind  prevailing  in  higher  Turkish  circles. 

This  chart  or  table  is  based  “on  the  statistics  of  1917,  and 
this  fact  alone  is  enough  to  show  how  scandalously  unfair  it  is. 
It  is  well  known  that  from  1914-1917  the  Turkish  Government 
deported  to  the  interior  of  Asia  Minor  the  greater  part  of  the 
Greeks  of  the  coast  of  the  Ægean  and  that  nearly  all  the  others, 
terrified  by  the  persecutions,  have  sought  a  refuge  at  Chios, 
Samos,  Lesbos  or  the  Greek  mainland.  It  is  from  this  country, 
systematically  robbed  of  its  Greek  inhabitants,  that  statistics 
favorable  to  the  oppressor  are  now  being  drawn,  as  if  crime 
created  rights,  and  as  if  all  that  was  necessary  was  to  massacre 
and  deport  entire  populations  in  order  to  bring  about  a  state 
of  affairs  against  which  the  claims  of  the  victims  would  have  no 
effect. 


52  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 

It  would  take  too  long  to  examine  these  curious  statistics 
district  by  district,  and  so  I  will  content  myself  with  a  few 
specific  examples  which  will  permit  us  to  judge  the  entire  system. 

The  city  of  Smyrna  and  its  immediate  environs  (Cordelio, 
Vourla,  etc.)  form  the  only  part  of  the  vilayet  of  Aidin,  where, 
because  of  the  interests  of  the  city  itself  and  the  troublesome 
presence  of  foreigners,  the  Turks  did  not  dare  to  apply  the 
principle  of  mass  deportations.  The  result  is  that  for  localities 
like  Vourla  the  bad  faith  even  of  the  Mohammedans  is  forced 
to  submit  to  the  law  of  evidence  and  to  concede  to  the  Greeks 
a  majority,  if  not  exact,  at  any  rate  huge,  admitting  a  propor¬ 
tion  of  22,383  Greeks  to  9,516  Turks.  In  the  case  of  Smyrna 
itself,  such  an  admission  would  carry  consequences  too  serious 
to  allow  them  to  make  it.  It  is  far  better  to  lie.  Behold,  then, 
the  table  which  was  presented  to  the  Conference:  111,486 
Turks,  87,497  Greeks,  24,403  Jews,  12,857  Armenians  and  1,936 
foreigners.  Now,  nothing  can  be  more  erroneous  than  this. 
We  have  seen  above  (page  37)  that  the  statistics  that  I  was  able 
to  see  at  Smyrna — secret  Turkish  statistics  and  therefore  honest 
statistics — give  totally  different  figures,  which  I  here  repeat  as 
they  were  dictated  to  me  by  the  Mohammedan  official  who  had 
them  in  his  possession:  150,000  Greeks,  110,000  Turks,  15,000 
Armenians,  10,000  Jews  and  about  15,000  foreigners  of  other 
ethnic  allegiance.  We  see,  then,  from  a  comparison  of  these 
two  tables  that  the  Turks  have,  as  far  as  Smyrna  is  concerned, 
two  quite  different  sets  of  statistics;  one,  as  exact  as  possible 
for  their  own  use,  and  the  other,  as  inexact  as  possible,  destined 
to  be  used  for  the  edification  of  naive  Europeans  and  too 
trusting  diplomats. 

In  the  same  table  of  the  vilayet  of  Aidin,  the  district  of 
Tchesme  was  represented  by  the  following  figures:  7,985  Turks 
and  197  Greeks.  How  could  there  have  been,  right  in  war  time, 
197  Greeks  at  Tchesme?  It  is  an  inexplicable  mystery!  Per¬ 
haps  this  figure  was  given  in  the  attempt  to  make  people  be¬ 
lieve  that  a  foreign-born  minority  could  live  in  1917  side  by 
side  with  the  Mussulmans.  At  all  events,  let  me  give  my  per¬ 
sonal  testimony  as  to  this  point.  I  visited  Tchesme  on  the 
24th  of  last  March  and  had  a  long  and  interesting  conversation 
with  the  Turkish  governor  of  the  district  as  to  conditions  in 
the  town  and  the  country  round  about.  From  the  account 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  53 

that  he  gave  me,  on  the  basis  of  the  official  Turkish  statistics, 
I  learned  that  at  that  time  (March,  1919)  the  population  num¬ 
bered  12,038  inhabitants,  including  the  Mohadjirs.  Before  the 
war  it  numbered  45,265  inhabitants.  If  there  had  been  no 
immigration  of  Mohadjirs,  the  difference  between  the  two 
figures  would  have  represented  the  number  of  Greek  inhabitants 
who  had  disappeared  in  consequence  of  voluntary  emigration  or 
of  deportation.  But  we  should  actually  subtract  from  the 
number  of  the  Mussulmans  that  of  the  Mohadjirs,  who  are 
not  indigenous  inhabitants,  but  have  been  settled  in  Tchesme 
only  since  the  departure  of  the  Greeks.  The  governor  could 
not  give  me  the  precise  number  of  these,  but  he  estimated  it 
at  about  half  the  total  number  of  inhabitants.  We  must  then 
conclude  that  before  the  war  the  district  of  Tchesme  numbered 
approximately  40,000  Greeks  and  5,000  or  6,000  Mussulmans. 
We  see  how  this  fact  became  distorted  in  the  statistical  table 
of  the  Society  for  the  Defense  of  Ottoman  Rights. 

In  order  not  to  prolong  beyond  measure  observations,  which 
could  only  give  similar  results,  I  will  call  attention  to  only  one 
more  point;  the  district  of  Phocea.  The  famous  statistics  of 
1917  reveal  there  8,147  Turks  and  69  Jews.  That  is  all,  and 
it  is  probably  exact.  I  visited,  at  that  same  time,  the  two 
villages  which  bear  the  name  of  Phocea,  the  Old  Phocea  and 
the  New.  The  Old  Phocea  which  had  7,000  or  8,000  inhabi¬ 
tants  before  the  war,  had  only  about  300  when  I  visited  it  last 
March.  Since  no  Mohadjirs  were  settled  at  Old  Phocea,  these 
300  inhabitants  represent  practically  the  total  Turkish  popu¬ 
lation  before  the  war;  the  7,000  other  inhabitants  were  Greeks. 
All  that  is  necessary  in  order  to  convince  one’s  self  of  the  void 
left  by  the  exodus  of  the  Greeks  is  to  pass  along  the  streets  of 
this  unhappy  city.  Only  here  and  there  is  an  inhabited  house 
or  an  open  shop  to  be  seen!  Elsewhere  is  only  silence,  death, 
and  ruin. 

New  Phocea  is  more  alive,  because  a  certain  number  of 
Mohadjirs  have  come  to  increase  the  Mussulman  minority. 
Before  the  war  the  population  of  New  Phocea,  nearly  equal  to 
that  of  the  ancient,  was  made  up,  according  to  information 
that  I  gathered  on  the  spot,  of  1,700  Greek  families  (7,000 
persons)  and  150  Turkish  families  (600  persons)  ;  in  March,  1919 


54  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 

there  were  about  400  Turkish  fahiilies  (1,600  persons);  all  the 
Greek  population  had  disappeared,  having  been  deported  to 
the  interior  or  having  taken  refuge  in  Mitylene. 

These  are  facts  that  the  Turkish  statistics  do  not  show. 
Based  on  an  abnormal  and  temporary  state  of  affairs,  drawing 
argument  from  the  persecutions  that  they  ought,  by  all  right, 
to  endeavor  to  deny,  to  conceal,  or  to  extenuate,  they  are 
virtually  a  public  and  convincing  admission  of  the  systematic 
depopulation  carried  on  by  the  Turkish  authorities  throughout 
the  whole  littoral  of  Western  Asia  Minor.  In  the  last  analysis, 
therefore,  all  this  tendencious  argumentation  comes  back 
against  Turkey  and  constitutes  an  accusation  so  definite,  so 
eloquent  and  so  complete  that  it  ruins  the  Turkish  thesis  which 

it  seeks  to  support. 

We  must,  however,  add  that  at  the  present  time  these 
statistics  of  1917  no  longer  correspond  to  the  actual  state  of 
affairs.  The  Greeks  deported  to  the  interior — or  at  least  those 
who  survive — are  returning  to  their  hearths  and  taking  posses¬ 
sion  again  of  their  property.  Those  who  have  taken  refuge  in 
Greece  will  also  return.  Though  reduced  in  numbers  by  mis¬ 
ery,  epidemics,  and  ill-treatment,  the  Greek  majority,  so  pre¬ 
ponderant  in  the  important  places,  will  become  sufficiently 
strong  to  drive  into  oblivion  these  artificial  statistics  which 
will  remain  only  as  one  witness  more  of  the  barbarity  which 
Turkey  has  evinced  during  this  period  toward  the  populations 
of  foreign  blood. 

Charles  Vellay. 


HELLENISM  IN  ASIA  MINOR  IN  THE 

MIDDLE  AGES. 

By  Charles  Diehl 

(Translated  from  an  article  in  La  Revue  Hebdomadaire  of 
March  29,  1919) 

The  place  that  Asia  Minor  holds  in  the  history  of  ancient 
Greece  is  known  to  all.  It  was  on  the  coasts  of  Ionia,  in  the 
great  flourishing  cities  like  Miletus  and  Ephesus,  Priene  and 
Phocea,  Smyrna,  Colophon  or  Clazomenæ  and  in  the  islands 
which  skirt  the  coast  of  Anatolia,  in  Lesbos,  Chios  and  Samos, 
that  the  torch  of  Hellenic  civilization  was  lighted  even  before 
it  shone  forth  in  Greece  proper.  It  was  there  that  epic  poetry 
took  its  rise  and  that  lyric  poetry  had  its  marvelous  bloom 
later;  it  was  there  that  for  the  first  time  in  the  Greek  world 
the  philosophers  attempted  to  explain  the  universe,  and  the 
historians  to  record  the  history  of  humanity;  it  was  there, 
too,  that  for  the  first  time  artists  endeavored  to  realize  their 
dream  of  beauty.  It  can  rightly  be  said,  therefore,  that  “Ionia 
was  truly  the  school  of  Greece.”  It  was  from  Asia  Minor  as 
weÙ  as  from  Greece  that  Hellenism  shed  its  bright  rays  to  the 
extremities  of  the  Occident  in  that  Magna  Græcia  so  full  of 
Ionian  colonies,  and  even  as  far  as  the  shores  of  distant  Gaul. 

Everybody  knows,  too,  the  rôle  that  Asia  Minor  played  in 
the  great  expansion  of  Hellenism  which  followed  the  conquests 
of  Alexander  the  Great,  and  how  alongside  of  Antioch  and 
Alexandria,  Pergamum  became  one  of  the  intellectual  capitals 
of  the  new  world.  Next  to  Halicarnassus  and  Cnidus,  where 
the  most  illustrious  masters  of  the  fourth  century  had  left 
incomparable  monuments  of  their  genius,  Rhodes,  Tralles  and 
Pergamum  became  centers  of  admirable  schools  of  art,  and 
Myrina  saw  the  birth  of  those  charming  terra-cotta  figurines 

55 


56  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 


whose  elegant  and  supple  grace  equals  that  of  the  statuettes 
of  Tanagra.  Asia  Minor,  finally,  took  a  large  part  in  that 
great  movement  of  civilization  which  caused  Hellenism  to  pene¬ 
trate  to  the  very  heart  of  Asia,  as  far  as  Bactria,  which  became 
a  province  of  Greece,  and  even  as  far  as  India,  where  an  art 
permeated  by  Greek  influences  flourished  in  the  Gandhara. 

No  one  is  unaware  of  what  Anatolia  was  during  the  first 
centuries  of  Christianity,  and  of  the  glory  of  the  churches  of 
Asia  Minor,  which  were  made  famous  by  the  memory  of  St. 
Paul  and  St.  John.  It  was  in  Asia  Minor,  at  Nicea,  Ephesus, 
and  Chalcedon  that  the  solemn  assemblies  were  held  in  which 
Christian  dogma  was  settled  and  the  Christian  faith  established. 
In  Asia  Minor  some  of  the  most  celebrated  among  the  church 
fathers  were  born,  St.  Basil,  Gregory  of  Nyssa  and  Gregory  of 
Nazianzus,  who  made  of  Cappodocia  in  the  fourth  century  one 
of  the  most  glorious  centers  of  our  religion. 

What  is  not  so  generally  known  perhaps  is  what  Asia  Minor 
was  during  the  long,  troubled  centuries  of  the  Middle  Ages  and 
how  in  this  Christian  empire  of  Byzantium  from  which  Greece 
of  today  takes  its  rise  as  much  at  least  as  from  ancient  Greece, 
Anatolia  was  truly  the  reservoir  of  the  forces  of  the  monarchy. 
For  ten  centuries  of  history,  centuries  that  we  too  often  forget, 
the  Byzantine  Empire  carried  forward  and  enlarged  Hellenism; 
and  in  none  of  the  provinces  of  the  monarchy  did  the  vitality 
of  the  Greek  race,  its  marvelous  power  of  assimilation  and 
expansion  manifest  themselves  more  strongly  than  in  Byzan¬ 
tine  Asia  Minor.  It  was  there  that  in  spite  of  the  rude  blows 
delivered  by  the  Turkish  conquest,  eastern  Hellenism  was  able 
to  continue  to  exist,  obscurely,  to  be  sure,  but  with  tenacity 
and  strength;  it  was  there  that  the  resurrection,  which  in  the 
nineteenth  century  once  more  made  a  considerable  part  of 
Anatolia  a  real  Greek  land,  was  slowly  prepared,  and  it  is 
there  that  this  dead  past  gains  an  importance  and  significance 
for  the  history  of  our  own  time;  it  forms  the  strong  bond  by 
which  the  tradition  of  ancient  Greece  is  attached  to  the  realities 
of  the  present  hour.* 

*1  anticipate  in  this  brief  article,  statements  which  will  shortly  appear  in  a 
volume  which  I  am  publishing  in  G.  LeBon’s  “Bibliothèque  de  philosophie  scienti¬ 
fique, ^  entitled:  “Byzance,  Grandeur  et  décadence.” 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  57 

I. 

In  the  administrative  and  military  organization  of  the  Byzan¬ 
tine  Empire  greater  importance  was  always  attributed  to  the 
Asiatic  part  of  the  monarchy  than  to  the  European.  In  the 
themes  of  Anatolia  (administrative  districts  of  the  Byzantine 
Empire)  were  concentrated  the  best  and  most  numerous  ele¬ 
ments  of  the  imperial  army.  In  the  hierarchic  classification  of 
dignitaries  the  governors  of  the  Asiatic  provinces  held  a  rank 
far  higher  than  those  of  the  provinces  of  Europe,  and  their 
remuneration  in  like  manner  was  far  greater.  These  indica¬ 
tions  are  of  no  little  importance.  They  attest  the  fact  that,  in 
the  opinion  of  the  imperial  government,  the  Orient — in  which 
were  included,  also,  for  purposes  of  administration  the  two 
rich  European  provinces  of  Thrace  and  Macedonia— had  a  far 
greater  importance  than  the  poor  and  mediocre  districts  of  the 
Occident.  In  Asia  there  were  governments  of  immense  extent; 
those  of  Anatolia,  Armenia,  Thracesia,  the  Opsikians  and  the 
Bucellarians,  fertile  and  prosperous,  which  were  generally  obedi¬ 
ent  and  peaceable,  and  which  paid  their  tributes  exactly;  pro¬ 
tected  on  the  side  of  the  sea  by  the  imperial  fleets  and  on  the 
interior  frontiers  by  an  uninterrupted  series  of  powerful  for¬ 
tresses,  inhabited  by  a  population  of  Greek  origin  that  was 
sufficiently  homogeneous,  devoted  to  commerce,  industry  and 
agriculture,  and  conserving  the  traces  of  their  old  civilization, 
these  provinces,  as  has  been  said  f  4  really  formed  the  Roman 
Empire,  *  Constantinople  being,  as  has  been  cleverly  remarked, 
only  a  bridge-head  on  the  European  shore/’f  If,  compared 
with  the  capital,  which  was  the  luxury  and  ornament  of  the 
Empire,  the  Byzantine  province  appeared  everywhere  as  a 
sound,  robust  and  vigorous  element,  it  was  in  Anatolia  above 
all  that  this  strength  showed  itself,  and  the  decadence  of  the 
monarchy  dates  from  the  day  when  it  lost  Asia  Minor. 

From  very  ancient  times  the  ethnography  of  Asia  Minor  has 
been  subjected  to  few  changes.  It  was  always  the  Greek  race 
and  the  Greek  language  that  dominated  there.  The  Anatolian 
peninsula  suffered  from  barbarian  invasions  far  less  than  the 
Balkan  Peninsula,  and  in  spite  of  dangerous  crises  it  strongly 

*A.  Rambaud,  L  'empire  grec  au  Xe  siècle,  p.  255. 

fNewmann,  La  situation  mondiale  de  V empire  byzantin  avant  les  croisades. 

p.  oo» 


58  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 

sustained  the  assault  of  the  Arab  incursions  up  to  the  end  of 
the  twelfth  century.  Although,  no  doubt,  as  a  result  of  war 
and  civil  discord,  the  population  of  Anatolia  was  weakened, 
diminished  and  thinned  out,  it  was  not  at  all  modified  ethno- 
graphically.  Time,  of  course,  introduced  certain  foreign  ele¬ 
ments,  German  or  Slav  mercenaries,  Syrian,  Arabian  and 
Armenian  colonists.  Taken  as  a  whole,  Greek  Asia  Minor 
with  its  homogeneous  population,  its  famous  cities,  its  glorious 
history  persisted,  and  this  was  due  not  only  to  an  element  of 
cohesion  and  force;  “by  religious  and  monarchic  feelings,  by 
tradition,  above  all  by  the  maintenance  of  peace  and  order 
that  were  so  necessary  for  their  commerce,  the  Greek  countries 
gave  a  good  example  to  the  other  races.”* 

Anatolia  furnished  the  Empire  with  its  best  soldiers.  On  the 
coast,  in  the  maritime  themes  of  Samos  and  the  Kibyrraiots, 
were  recruited  the  greater  part  of  the  vessels  of  the  imperial 
fleet.  In  the  interior  the  rough  mountaineers  of  Isauria,  of 
Lycaonia,  of  the  Taurus,  and  the  sturdy  peasants  of  Cappa¬ 
docia,  the  needy  but  valiant  nobility  of  the  Armenian  districts 
gave  the  army  most  admirable  contingents.  It  is  in  Anatolia, 
above  all,  that  we  find  those  military  fiefs,  handed  down  from 
father  to  son,  the  whole  life  of  which  centered  in  training  for 
war.  In  Anatolia  lived  the  war-like  Acrites,  those  guardians 
of  the  frontier  who  so  marvelously  developed  their  energy  for 
war-like  adventure  in  the  constant  struggles  in  which  they 
engaged  on  the  marches  of  the  Euphrates  and  the  Taurus. 

At  an  early  time,  too,  great  estates  were  established  in  Asia 
Minor,  whose  proprietors,  amid  a  cortège  of  clients,  vassals 
and  soldiers,  lived  a  feudal  life  on  their  lands.  The  elite  of 
Byzantine  aristocracy  was  of  Anatolian  origin.  It  was  from 
Anatolia  that  all  the  great  families  sprang,  bearing  the  names 
of  Phocas,  Skleros,  Maniakes,  Dalassenos,  Diogenes,  Botani- 
ates,  Doucas,  and  Comnenus,  whose  glorious  deeds  fill  Byzan¬ 
tine  history.  In  their  pride  these  Asia  Minor  barons  considered 
themselves  members  of  a  nobility  that  was  far  superior  to  the 
aristocracy  of  the  provinces  of  Europe;  in  any  case  they  justi¬ 
fied  their  claims  by  the  preeminent  services  which  they  ren¬ 
dered  to  the  Empire.  They  provided  it  with  its  best  officers 

*A.  Rambaud,  L'empire  grec  au  Xe  siècle,  p.  257 . 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  59 


and  its  most  illustrious  generals.  By  their  presence  they  gave 
the  Asia  Minor  troops  an  incomparable  solidity  and  cohesion. 
Brought  up  from  their  very  boyhood  as  soldiers,  these  noblemen 
were  splendidly  trained  and  adapted  to  war.  The  system  of 
regional  recruiting,  furthermore,  placed  under  their  orders  men 
who  knew  them,  their  valor,  their  riches,  their  achievements; 
men  who  in  civil  life  were  often  united  to  them  by  the  bonds  of 
clients  or  vassals.  Such  leaders  had  in  the  eyes  of  their  soldiers 
an  extraordinary  prestige  and  popularity  which  was  maintained 
by  their  liberality  and  the  benefits  that  their  soldiers  expected 
from  them.  The  regiments  of  Anatolia  were  therefore  ready 
to  follow  their  generals  anywhere  with  an  unshakable  devotion 
and  fidelity. 

In  this  great  Anatolian  aristocracy  the  Empire  found  its  best 
servitors  not  only  for  the  army  but  for  all  the  departments 
of  public  administration.  Anatolia,  Georgia,  subject  as  well 
as  independent  Armenia,  formed  a  nursery  for  Byzantium  of 
high  dignitaries  and  generals.  A  host  of  soldiers  of  fortune 
from  there  made  their  way  to  the  capital  in  order  to  try  to 
obtain  court  rank  and  dignity;  the  feudal  nobles  of  Asia  Minor 
regarded  it  as  an  honor  to  have  all  the  members  of  their 
families  serve  the  imperial  government.  In  the  ninth  and 
tenth  centuries  the  court  and  the  army  were  filled  with  men 
from  Asia  Minor.  Byzantine  art  with  a  picturesque  realism 
was  pleased  to  represent  them  as  they  passed  through  the 
streets  of  Constantinople  with  their  swarthy  complexions,  their 
hooked  noses,  their  almond-shaped  eyes,  hidden  beneath  shaggy 
brows,  their  pointed  beards  and  their  long,  black  hair  falling 
over  their  shoulders.  History  shows  them  rising  to  the  highest 
ranks  and  at  times  even  to  supreme  power.  The  dynasty 
which  goes  by  the  name  of  Macedonian  was  in  reality  of  Armen¬ 
ian  origin.  The  Roman  Emperor  Lecapenus  was  born  in  the 
theme  of  Armenia.  The  most  illustrious  generals  of  the  Em¬ 
pire,  Gourgen,  Phocas,  Skleros,  Maniakes,  as  well  as  many 
others,  belonged  to  the  grand  nobility  of  Anatolia.  And  from 
among  these  nobles  came  some  of  the  most  glorious  Byzantine 
emperors,  Nicephoros  Phocas,  John  Tzimisces,  a  Roman  Di¬ 
ogenes,  and  the  princes  of  the  Comneni  family.  We  may  see 
with  what  scorn  an  Asiatic  writer  of  the  eleventh  century 


60  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 


compares  an  emperor  born  of  Anatolian  aristocracy  with  a 
noble  of  the  western  provinces  who  seems  to  him  without  race 
and  without  country. 

II. 

Thus  Anatolia  formed  a  reservoir  of  energy  and  force  for  the 
Empire.  Life  there,  as  far  as  we  can  see,  contributed  to  main¬ 
tain  these  qualities  of  vigor  and  activity. 

The  extant  lives  of  the  saints  born  in  Anatolia  show  the  great 
development  that  agriculture  had  attained  in  the  eighth  and 
tenth  centuries.  Whether  in  the  theme  of  the  Bucellarians  or  in 
that  of  the  Thracesians,  whether  it  be  in  the  region  of  Miletus 
or  of  Paphlagonia,  we  find  mention  everywhere  of  fertile 
grounds  that  robust  laborers  had  brought  under  cultivation. 
Certain  passages  permit  us  to  guess  at  the  extent  of  this  rural 
exploitation.  The  fortune  of  such  and  such  a  personage — 
assuredly  a  man  of  considerable  importance  in  his  village  but 
a  man  who  was  not  a  noble  but  simply  of  good  country  family — 
included  fifty  farms,  about  which  were  lands  of  considerable 
extent,  well  cultivated  and  well  irrigated,  which  produced 
abundant  crops;  to  this  was  added  a  quantity  of  stock:  six  hun¬ 
dred  cattle,  a  hundred  teams  for  cultivation  of  the  soil,  eight 
hundred  horses  out  at  pasture,  eighty  draft  horses  and  mules, 
one  thousand  two  hundred  sheep;  numerous  servitors  with  their 
wives  and  their  children  lived  on  the  estate,  and  in  the  center 
rose  the  old  family  mansion,  large  and  beautiful,  with  its  recep¬ 
tion  rooms,  its  grand  dining  room,  splendidly  decorated,  in 
which  was  to  be  seen  the  enormous  round-table  in  ivory  emboss¬ 
ed  with  gold,  which  afforded  a  place  for  thirty-six  guests,  with  its 
secluded  gynekonitis  where  the  women  lived  far  from  indis¬ 
creet  glances  and  never  going  forth  from  the  house.  There 
were  of  course  more  modest  fortunes:  a  house,  some  fields,  a 
pair  of  oxen,  a  horse,  an  ass,  a  cow  and  her  calf,  two  hundred 
and  fifty  beehives,  constituted  the  whole  wealth  ;  a  servitor  and 
a  maid-servant  constituted  the  whole  menage.  Existence  was 
difficult.  Often  it  was  necessary  to  buy  the  requisite  stock  for 
cultivation  on  credit,  to  borrow  money  to  live  on  and  bring 
up  a  family  that  was  ordinarily  numerous.  But  from  top  to 
bottom  of  the  social  scale  life  appeared  equally  simple,  strenuous 
and  vigorous.  The  man  directed  the  work  of  the  farm  and 
at  times  cultivated  the  soil;  he  drove  his  plow  and  his  oxen 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  61 


himself;  the  wife  worked  with  her  servant  at  the  household 
duties  ;  she  tended  to  the  cooking,  dusted  the  house  and  set  the 
table;  the  children  of  the  family  waited  on  the  table  when 
guests  were  entertained.  All  the  family  lived  together  on  the 
estate,  the  sons,  the  daughters  and  the  children  of  these 
daughters,  in  a  close  and  affectionate  union.  Hospitality  was 
free,  charity  abundant,  piety  simple  and  profound.  Thus 
Anatolian  society  appears  full  of  solid  virtues. 

This  was  not  all.  A  curious  passage  of  the  historian  Leon 
Diacre  shows  that  bonds  of  devotion  and  fidelity  existed  be¬ 
tween  these  Asia  Minor  barons  and  the  people  of  their  prov¬ 
inces.  Bardas  Phocas,  nephew  of  the  Emperor  Nicephoros, 
patrician  and  duke  of  the  theme  of  Chaldea  had  been  disgraced 
on  the  death  of  his  uncle  and  interned  at  Amasia.  With  the  aid  of 
two  of  his  cousins  he  escaped  from  prison  and  betook  himself  to 
Cæsarea  and  Cappadocia,  where  his  family  possessed  inherited 
property,  where  he  himself  had  his  feudal  palace  and  where  the 
name  of  Phocas  was  illustrious  and  popular.  He  at  once  found 
support  and  soldiers  for  the  revolt  that  he  had  planned.  “All 
those,”  so  the  historian  says,  “who  had  bonds  of  blood  or  relation¬ 
ship  with  him  ran  to  him  in  crowds.”  His  cousins  brought  him 
troops  ;  his  father,  escaping  from  exile  on  Lesbos,  brought  him 
Macedonian  mercenaries;  above  all,  his  wealth,  the  prestige 
of  his  name,  his  liberality,  the  vast  hopes  that  were  placed  in 
his  success  attracted  innumerable  partisans  to  him.  One,  of 
whom  Leon  Diacre  speaks,  was  a  curious  figure.  He  was 
called  Simeon,  surnamed  Ampelas  because  he  was  a  proprietor 
of  large  vineyards.  He  was  famous  throughout  the  east  for  his 
wealth.  He  was  not  of  noble  birth  but  by  his  strength  and 
valor  he  was  the  peer  of  the  best  chevaliers.  A  natural  solidar¬ 
ity  attached  him  to  the  party  of  Phocas  for  among  all  these 
grand  archons  who  dominated  Asia  there  were  not  only  family 
alliances  but  a  community  of  interests  and  sentiments  which 
made  of  them  a  real  caste,  redoubtable  and  proud,  with 
feelings  of  unlimited  devotion  and  unshakable  fidelity. 

Other  causes  tended  to  maintain  Anatolian  energies.  From 
the  shores  of  the  Black  Sea  to  the  regions  of  the  Euphrates  and 
Mt.  Taurus  Asia  Minor  was  in  contact  with  the  Mohammedan 
world.  In  these  frontier  provinces  peopled  with  soldiers  and 
bristling  with  fortresses  where  life  was  spent  under  the  con- 


m  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 


stant  menace  of  Arabian  incursions,  with  the  constant  thought 
of  returning  blow  for  blow,  surprise  for  surprise  and  raid  for 
raid,  people  lived  a  rude,  dangerous  and  heroic  life.  A  little 
military  book  of  the  tenth  century,  a  treatise  on  tactics  pre¬ 
served  under  the  name  of  Nicephoros  Phocas,  pictures  to  us 
in  vivid  colors  the  active,  brutal  and  perilous  existence  on  the 
confines  of  Cilicia  or  on  the  marches  of  Cappadocia  with  the 
eye  constantly  on  the  watch  against  ambush  and  the  spirit  alert 
to  follow  up  the  movements  and  discover  the  tricks  of  an 
indefatigable  and  elusive  enemy,  with  the  sword  always  ready 
and  the  horse  always  saddled  to  battle  with  and  repulse  the 
invader.  The  popular  Byzantine  poetry  has  likewise  cele¬ 
brated  the  magnificent  epic  of  these  wars  in  Asia  Minor.  The 
chanson  de  geste  of  Digenis  Akritas  shows  what  this  frontier 
countrv  was,  where  heroic  and  chivalrous  feudal  nobles  sus- 
tained  in  the  name  of  the  emperor  the  eternal  struggle  against 
the  infidels.  It  was  the  country  of  the  Akrites  or  guardians  of 
the  border,  the  country  of  the  Apelates,  a  sort  of  knightly 
brigands  always  in  quest  of  adventure,  the  country  of  heroic 
duels,  of  the  carrying  away  of  women,  of  pillage  and  surprise, 
of  massacres  and  adventure,  of  love  and  war,  Popular  imag¬ 
ination  has  without  doubt  embellished  the  pictures  of  its  hero 
with  a  glamor  of  elegance,  chivalrous  courtesy,  magnificence 
and  splendor;  Digenis  Akritas  appears  in  the  poem  as  a  veritable 
Paladin,  but  this  way  of  living,  in  spite  of  this  glorification 
which  idealizes  it,  permits  us,  nevertheless,  to  see  its  real  and 
permanent  basis  of  brutality  and  cruelty;  it  was  a  society  with 
violent  habits  where  force  created  right  and  where  the  sword 
prevailed;  a  society  of  rude,  cruel,  pitiless  soldiers,  for  whom 
life  was  one  perpetual  battle  and  whose  chief  care,  while  await¬ 
ing  the  death  that  they  braved  each  day,  was  to  fight  gloriously 
and  joyfully  for  the  defense  of  the  Empire  and  the  Orthodox 
Church,  for  the  love  of  glory,  woman  and  gold. 

For  all  these  reasons  the  men  of  the  Asiatic  provinces  were 
steeled  for  a  life  of  struggle.  Besides,  their  country  was  rich. 
The  fields  of  Cilicia  and  Cappadocia,  the  themes  of  the  Thrace- 
sians  and  of  the  Bucellarians,  were  amazingly  fertile,  well  culti¬ 
vated,  and  fully  developed  regions.  Anatolia  was  full  of  large 
cities,  many  of  which,  such  as  Cæsarea,  Ancyra,  Amorion, 
Amasia,  Chonae,  Pergamum,  Philadelphia  and  Nicea  seem  to 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  63 


have  been  prosperous  up  to  the  twelfth  century.  Ports  like 
Adana,  Tarsus,  Adalia,  Ephesus,  Smyrna,  Phocea,  Kerasunda, 
Sinope  and  Trebizond  showed  a  fruitful  commercial  activity. 
The  life  of  the  great  Asiatic  barons,  as  represented  by  history 
and  the  popular  epic,  was  full  of  luxury,  wealth  and  splendor. 
The  palace  of  Digenis  Akritas,  built  on  the  Euphrates  in  the 
midst  of  wonderful  gardens,  sparkled  with  gems  and  gold.  On 
the  walls  brilliant  mosaics  represented  the  exploits  of  Samson 
and  David,  of  Achilles  and  Alexander,  the  adventures  of  Ulysses 
along  side  of  the  history  of  Joshua.  The  fêtes  given  in  these 
palaces  were  of  incomparable  magnificence:  vessels  of  pure 
silver,  costly  jewels,  silks  of  wondrous  designs,  precious 
enameled  work,  beautiful  tapestries,  dazzling  processions, 
splendid  hunting  outfits,  costumes  of  unheard  of  richness,  the 
most  magnificent  of  weapons.  Undoubtedly  here  too  the  epics 
exaggerate  the  luxury  displayed  by  these  great  feudal  families 
of  the  Asiatic  provinces.  But  their  wrealth  was  real  and  this 
as  well  as  their  valor  contributed  to  the  power  of  the  monarchy. 

Another  source  of  strength  in  Byzantine  Asia  Minor  was  the 
intensity  of  the  religious  life.  If  we  run  through  the  lists  of 
bishops  in  which  the  suffragans  of  the  Patriarch  of  Constan¬ 
tinople  are  recorded,  we  find  that  at  the  beginning  of  the  tenth 
century  there  were  in  Anatolia  more  than  four  hundred  metro¬ 
politans,  archbishops  and  bishops.  At  the  beginning  of  the 
fourteenth  century,  although  the  Turks  had  conquered  the 
greater  part  of  the  country, there  existed  nearly  fifty  métropoles 
as  centers  of  ecclesiastic  circumscription;  and  if,  quite  naturally, 
the  greater  part  of  the  Christian  centers  were  in  the  western 
part  of  Anatolia  and  near  the  coast,  it  is,  nevertheless,  worth 
noticing  that,  in  the  interior,  too,  there  were  to  be  found 
here  and  there,  Christian  communities  of  considerable  im¬ 
portance. 

Monastic  life  was  just  as  flourishing.  Olympus  in  Bithynia 
and  Mount  Latros  near  Miletus  were  filled  with  monasteries 
that  were  celebrated  throughout  Byzantine  Asia  Minor;  even 
in  the  solitudes  of  Cappadocia  numerous  monasteries  were 
established,  in  which  have  been  found,  in  the  last  few  years, 
hundreds  of  frescoes,  painted  from  the  ninth  to  twelfth  cen¬ 
turies,  which  are  counted  among  the  most  interesting  monu¬ 
ments  of  Byzantine  art.  Nothing  shows  better  how  far  Greek 


64  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 


culture  had  penetrated,  even  into  these  remote  regions.  The 
church,  in  Asia  Minor,  as  elsewhere,  formed  the  most  efficient 
instrument  for  the  propagation  of  Hellenism. 

In  the  Byzantine  Empire,  just  as  is  the  case  today  in  the 
whole  Christian  east,  religion  was  always  closely  bound  up 
with  nationality:  what  really  made  the  unity  of  the  Greek 
monarchy  of  the  Middle  Ages  a  fact  was  the  common  profession 
of  Hellenism  and  Christianity.  It  was  in  this  way  that  the 
imperial  government,  at  all  periods  of  its  history,  was  enabled 
to  assimilate  refractory  elements  and  to  expand  its  influence 
among  the  peoples  recently  conquered.  More  than  once,  in 
brutal  fashion,  it  deported  entire  populations  in  order  to  estab¬ 
lish  Greek  colonists  in  their  places;  more  often  still  it  repopu¬ 
lated  in  this  way  countries  that  had  been  devastated  by  war 
and  robbed  of  their  inhabitants.  But  above  all  did  it  multiply 
the  establishment  of  new  bishoprics,  designed  to  place  the  im¬ 
print  of  orthodoxy  upon  the  country  and  thus  win  it  over  to 
the  Byzantine  civilization.  It  was  thus  that  in  eastern  Cappa¬ 
docia,  on  the  very  frontiers  of  the  Moslem  world,  in  the  upper 
Euphrates  valley  and  in  the  whole  of  Armenia,  Hellenism  per¬ 
meated  the  people  through  the  instrument  of  religious  propa¬ 
ganda,  each  new  bishropic  forming  another  center  of  Greek 
influence.  Among  the  most  interesting  phenomena  in  this 
Byzantine  Anatolia  is  this  great  achievement,  in  which  appear 
not  only  the  power  of  assimilation  and  expansion  possessed  by 
the  Byzantine  Empire  but  also  the  political  sense  of  this  wise 
administration,  which  was  really  the  sturdy  support  of  the 
monarchy.  It  was  the  church  that  succeeded  in  giving  Asia 
Minor  its  cohesive  strength,  through  casting  in  the  Hellenic 
mould  all  the  populations  that  lived  there,  while  it,  at  the  same 
time,  propagated  the  profound  and  fertile  influence  of  Greek 
culture  out  beyond  the  natural  limits  of  Anatolia. 

III. 

Assuredly  this  strength  that  Asia  Minor  brought  to  the  Em¬ 
pire  was  not  without  its  dangers.  This  grand  nobility  of  Ana¬ 
tolia,  proud  of  its  birth,  its  wealth  and  its  power  was,  generally 
speaking,  of  a  strangely  independent  nature.  At  the  same  time 
that  these  feudal  princes  remained  faithful  subjects,  they  were 
quite  undisciplined  subjects,  who  treated  the  emperor  almost 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  65 


as  their  equal,  feeling  that  they  had  the  right  to  give  him 
advice  and  taking  it  quite  ill  if  he  dared  to  dispense  with  it. 
In  their  distant  manors,  in  the  midst  of  their  vassals  and  their 
soldiers,  they  regarded  themselves  almost  as  sovereigns.  “When 
a  cause  is  just,”  declared  Digenis  Akritas,  “I  fear  nobody,  not 
even  the  Emperor.”  And  when  the  “Basileus”  traveled  in  Asia 
Minor,  as  soon  as  he  entered  the  frontier  provinces,  he  left 
behind  him  the  greater  part  of  his  courtiers,  for  it  was  the 
privilege  of  the  Akrites  to  escort  him  and  guarantee  his  safety. 

One  may  easily  guess  the  perils  that  might  arise  from  such 
a  situation,  the  temptations  that  it  afforded  the  Asiatic  aris¬ 
tocracy  to  manifest  its  dissatisfaction  or  to  gratify  ambition 
by  uprisings  against  the  imperial  government.  It  was  in  Asia 
Minor  that  almost  all  the  great  insurrections  broke  out  which 
shook  the  Empire  so  frequently,  and  most  of  the  usurpers  who 
aspired  to  the  throne  were  governors  of  oriental  themes  or 
noblemen  of  Anatolia.  The  history  of  the  Asiatic  Fronde ,  of 
the  formidable  uprisings  of  Bardas  Skleros  and  of  Bardas 
Phocas,  which,  at  the  end  of  the  tenth  century  so  profoundly 
disturbed  the  reign  of  Basil  II.  and  threatened  to  shake  the 
throne  itself,  are  enough  to  show  the  reality  of  these  perils. 
Even  the  central  power  itself  could  not  look  without  some 
feeling  of  distrust  upon  these  barons  who  were  far  too  powerful, 
too  rich,  too  popular,  and  in  too  perfect  control  of  the  troops 
that  they  commanded,  and  although  it  was  glad  to  make  use 
of  these  magnificent  warriors,  it  never  ceased  its  efforts  to 
diminish  their  power  and  their  influence.  Perhaps  these  very 
measures,  right  in  principle,  but  at  times  ill-advised,  wrought 
less  injury  to  the  feudal  nobility  which  they  were  designed  to 
strike,  than  to  the  Empire  itself,  whose  means  of  defense  they 
weakened. 

It  is  a  fact  that  in  spite  of  its  independent  and  haughty  atti¬ 
tude  this  Asia  Minor  nobility,  and  Anatolia  itself  in  its  en¬ 
tirety,  had  a  profound  feeling  of  its  duty  toward  the  monarchy. 
There  was,  to  a  degree  greater  than  one  would  believe,  a  real 
Byzantine  patriotism.  There  is  extant  a  curious  polemic  from 
the  tenth  century  that  bears  this  significant  title:  The  Patriot 
( Philopatris ) .  The  chanson  de  geste  of  Digenis  Akritas  clearly 
shows  the  same  sentiments.  The  hero  appears  as  the  defender 
of  the  Empire  and  Christianity.  The  Emperor  praises  him  for 


66  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 


this  as  much  as  for  his  valor.  In  truth,  in  the  mind  of  Digenis 
the  Empire  and  Orthodoxy  are  inseparable  terms,  two  aspects 
of  one  and  the  same  duty.  To  protect  fully  the  frontiers,  to 
reduce  the  infidels  to  submission,  to  permit  the  Orthodox 
Roman  Empire  to  live  at  peace,  protected  from  attack,  was  the 
hero’s  fixed  ideal,  the  great  service  that  he  rendered  and  desired 
to  render  to  the  monarchy.  This  consciousness  that  the  poet 
has  of  the  Byzantine  nationality  is  something  remarkable  and 
tends  to  show  that  it  truly  represents  the  sentiments  that 
governed  this  Anatolian  society,  which  was  more  truly  homo¬ 
geneous  than  that  of  the  rest  of  the  Empire,  more  thoroughly 
Greek  in  language  and  race,  and  more  profoundly  permeated 
by  religious  and  monarchic  sentiments. 

Thus  during  long  ages  Asia  Minor  formed  the  strength  of 
the  monarchy.  As  long  as  Byzantium  possessed  the  coasts  of 
Anatolia,  where  it  recruited  the  best  of  its  war  vessels,  its  fleets 
prevailed  in  eastern  seas:  when  it  lost  these,  toward  the  close 
of  the  eleventh  century,  the  ruin  of  that  navy  that  had  so  long 
been  the  glory  of  the  Roman  Empire  soon  followed.  Just  so 
long  as  Byzantium  was  the  mistress  of  these  oriental  themes , 
whence  she  drew  not  only  the  flower  of  her  soldiery  but  her 
best  officers  and  generals,  her  army  derived  from  this  reservoir 
a  most  remarkable  strength;  when,  at  the  end  of  the  eleventh 
century  the  Seldjuk  Turks,  victors  in  the  decisive  battle  of 
Manzikert  (1071),  established  in  the  heart  of  Anatolia  the 
sultanate  of  Roum,  the  Empire  received  a  terrific  blow  from 
which  it  never  recovered.  As  long  as  Byzantium  kept  the  rich 
and  fertile  provinces,  full  of  large  and  flourishing  cities  and  of 
crowded  ports,  it  found  with  no  difficulty  the  resources  requisite 
to  meet  its  expenses;  on  the  day  that  it  lost  these,  the  sources 
of  its  economic  prosperity  were  dried  up.  At  the  end  of  the 
eleventh  century  Asia  Minor,  devastated,  depopulated,  and 
exhausted  by  war,  ceased,  even  in  the  regions  which  remained 
under  the  imperial  control  or  temporarily  returned  to  it,  to  be 
of  any  help  to  Byzantium.  The  Comneni  were  the  last  of  the 
great  feudal  families  of  Anatolia  to  appear  in  Byzantine  history. 
If,  in  the  thirteenth  century,  the  emperors  of  Nicea,  in  the 
northwest  of  the  peninsula,  and  up  to  the  end  of  the  fifteenth 
century  the  emperors  of  Trebizond  in  the  north  maintained, 
not  ingloriously,  the  influence  and  prestige  of  Hellenism  in 


HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM  67 


Anatolia,  it  is  certain  that  in  the  thirteenth,  and  even  more  in 
the  fourteenth  century,  Hellenism  was  driven  back  before  the 
rising  tide  of  Islam  and  the  Orthodox  church,  on  which  it  had 
leaned,  was  incontestably  decadent. 

And  yet  so  powerful  and  so  profound  had  been  the  Hellenic 
imprint  with  which  Byzantium  had  marked  this  country  that  it 
was  never  completely  effaced  even  under  Turkish  domination. 
It  is  not  the  place  here  to  show  how,  in  spite  of  persecutions,  the 
Greeks  of  Asia  Minor  faithfully  supported  the  (Ecumenical 
Patriarchate  and  succeeded,  under  the  shadow  of  the  church, 
in  conserving  their  national  consciousness.  Nor  is  it  the  place 
to  show  how,  in  the  nineteenth  century,  the  admirable  vitality 
of  Hellenism  in  Anatolia  was  again  evinced,  and  how  the  Greeks 
of  Asia  Minor,  starting  from  the  coast,  spread  along  the  lines 
of  railroad  that  penetrate  to  the  heart  of  the  country  and,  with 
a  marvelous  tenacity,  reconquered  to  Hellenism,  step  by  step, 
a  considerable  part  of  the  interior  of  the  land.*  But  I  must  cite 
here  some  statistics,  whose  exactness  speaks  most  eloquently; 
they  show  better  than  any  course  of  reasoning  could,  that  in 
spite  of  their  sufferings,  in  spite  of  the  terrific  massacres  of  the 
last  few  years,  Hellenism  still  holds  its  own  in  Asia  Minor. 

There  are  at  present  in  Anatolia  nearly  1,700,000  Greeks, 
who  form  in  the  single  vilayet  of  Smyrna  a  compact  mass  of 
622,000  persons,  in  that  of  Brussa  278,000,  in  that  of  Trebizond 
353,000.  If  we  draw  a  line  from  Panormus,  passing  east  of  the 
peninsula  of  Artaki,  on  the  sea  of  Marmora,  and  ending  at 
Makri,  opposite  Rhodes,  the  belt  thus  formed,  comprising 
western  Anatolia  and  extending  inland  from  eighty  to  one  hun¬ 
dred  kilometers  from  the  coast,  will  comprise  more  than  800,000 
Greeks  (1,200,000  if  we  include  the  inhabitants  of  the  islands 
on  the  coast),  with  514  churches  and  454  Greek  schools,  at¬ 
tended  by  75,000  pupils.  Smyrna,  where,  out  of  a  total  popu¬ 
lation  of  400,000,  there  are  more  than  200,000  Greeks,  is,  in 
this  region,  the  great  focus  of  Hellenism.  If  one  traces  about 
this  city  an  arc  of  a  circle,  with  a  radius  of  105  kilometers,  it 
will  take  in  more  than  600,000  Greeks. 

It  has  been  justly  remarked  that  in  all  Anatolia  and  “even  in 
those  regions  where  the  Greeks  are  in  a  numerical  minority, 

*  As  to  this  subject  one  may  profitably  read  the  first  half  of  a  book  by  Mr.  Leon 
Maccas,  L’hellénisme  dans  l’Asie  Mineure,  Paris,  1919. 


68  HELLAS  AND  UNREDEEMED  HELLENISM 

Hellenism  represents  the  most  vital  and  progressive  ele¬ 
ment.”*  This  is  not  simply  a  result  of  chance.  Undoubtedly, 
since  the  distant  days  of  the  Middle  Ages,  Hellenism  in  Asia 
Minor  has  been  subjected  to  great  losses.  It  has  had  to  aban¬ 
don  a  large  part  of  those  eastern  provinces  of  the  peninsula 
where  it  was  once  dominant,  and  although,  in  the  provinces  of 
Adana,  Konieh,  Angora  and,  further  north,  in  those  of  Sivas 
and  Kastamuni,  we  still  find  considerable  masses  of  Greeks,  the 
total  number  of  whom  amounts  to  more  than  300,000  souls,  it 
is  nevertheless  certain  that  today  the  Greek  populations  are 
concentrated  in  the  regions  of  Trebizond  and,  more  particu¬ 
larly,  in  the  western  portion  of  Anatolia,  regions  which  were, 
for  long  centuries,  lands  that  were  supremely  Greek  and  Chris¬ 
tian.  Yet,  everywhere,  by  its  economic  activity,  by  its  intel¬ 
lectual  achievement,  by  the  zeal  with  which  it  establishes 
schools  and  propagates  Greek  influence  and  culture,  as  well  as 
by  its  language  and  its  religion,  this  Hellenism  strangely  re¬ 
calls  the  Hellenism  of  the  Middle  Ages.  It  carries  on  and  con¬ 
tinues  the  traditions  of  that  Hellenism,  and  so,  with  all  its 
roots,  it  goes  back  into  that  distant  past,  all  too  little  under¬ 
stood,  by  which  the  Hellenism  of  Asia  Minor  is  so  closely  linked 
to  Ancient  Greece.  It  is  on  the  basis,  therefore,  of  thirty  cen¬ 
turies  of  history  that  the  Greeks  of  Asia  Minor  may  legiti¬ 
mately  claim  their  right  to  independence. 

*Masson,  Smyrne  et  l’hellénisme  en  Asie-Mineure  (an  unpublished  report). 


X Jy  rf  L* j».  1 .  -' *7 </>  *»  •  *  *  v^5F^-y*P-  *  v- A?' 

v^,',:  *v  Jv. ^ 

/iirtSÉ! ••* •-  '^  ■f.  - ’-*  r^‘  v>£  :1  '  -  '  ,Vf  ■.  ’■'"  '  •»':  ■■■'  '  '. 

^  .V'~-:- 

«.  v.^.-.K  &:-y>#-sA.\i  >Z-\--^-^^tr-S'sr v  .  * 

PW^MPWI^iWi 

*->*.:  -'  ^:5V-,W  v  v> 

■  r  . .  -  i Yi  i^TTrTr^iTiTi^ rKrr‘MPPMB5ffK5rWfflf1i 

'sit  '■  t.  -  V«^*7.  ■  '**"  '  ‘Spi*  Hx’J  .S*5;  ■•N^V  ■>*»;  V>  ky.*-i<-.  /'.  .  «'•  ■  •  •'-"’ 


President 

Nicholas  Murray  Butler,  Ph.D.,  LL.D. 


Vice-Presidents 


It  f: 


Charles  W.  Eliot,  Ph.D.,  LL.D. 

Jacob  G.  Schurman,  D.Sc.,  LL.D.  ;%ÿj£i; 

Elihu  Root,  LL.D.,  D.C.L.  '  ’  .  i  *  .  '  . 

.  Secretary 

'  Carroll  N.  Brown,  Ph.D. 
Treasurer  '  ■'#.  ^  -  ■  a  .  ; :  .j-  ■'. .  •  ;  .;  : 

L.  J.  CaJvocoressi  ~  :- v  *v  '*'  >/ .>  ‘  •’  - 


ok  Cunliff e-Owen 

Xg.  v  •  ,\sy'<  s  "-i 


bhI 


91 

Ms&mll 


■  wap.  .  .. 


ï«ihK??j  «à.  Ai’  w  - 


. 

Frederick  R.  Coudert  Henry  Morganthau 
Frederick  Cunliffe-Owen  E.  H.  Outerbridge 


Charles  W.  Eliot 

A.  Barton  Hepburn 

ssÊÈé^iMkï  wmtÉr  m 


Alton  B.  Parker 
Edward  D.  Perry 


Elihu  Root 
Petros  Tatanis 
Henry  W.  Sackett 
Jacob  G.  Schurman 
Oscar  S.  Straus 
Constantine  Voicly 
George  M.  Whicher 


Kmmm* 


■ï  V-  fW.  &  .S4-  .  •  i  > 


â» 


Regular  Members 


Edward  D.  Adams 

np  rv>- 


LeRoy  W.  Baldwin 
Peter  T.  Barlow 
Philip  G.  Bartlett 
ViUiam  N.  Bates 
kbnund  L.  Baylies 


Edward  W.  Forbes 
Austen  G.  Fox 
P.  A.  S.  Franklin  r 
A.  S.  Frissell 
Albert  E.  Gallatin 
James  W.  Gerard 
Thos.  Dwight  Goodell 
Rollin  P.  Grant  : 
Charles  B.  Gulick 
William  D.  Guthrie 
John  Henry  Hammond 
William  F,  Harris 
George  Harvey 
Bert  Hodge  mil 
Alex.  G.  Humphreys 
Phoenix  Ingraham 

««w»  ^uase  C.  N.  Jackson 

-$■;>  William  A.  Clark  Walter  femmgs  ^ 

C.  A.  Coffin  Willard  V.  Kmg 

Howard  E.  Cole  .  Maurice  W.  Kosminski 
John  Constas  Benjamin  B.  Lawrence 

N.  C.  Culolias  C.  W.  Littlefield  .  -, 

R.  Fulton  Cutting  Clarence  H.  Mackay 

Robert  W.  DeForest  Alfred  E.  Marling 

William  C.  Demorest  George  Maxwell 

Raphael  Demos  Emerson  McMillan 


Franldin  Q<  BrqWn 
R.  J.  Caldwell 


Cleveland  H.  Dodge  k 
William  H.  Dunbar 
*>'•  Coleman  Dupont 


Walter  H.  Merrall 
John  G.  Milbum 


i:"  .V-'-:- 


_  „  Moses 

am  *.  Stephen  M.  Newman 

f-Emerson  Herbert  Noble 

\t  Stephen  ifepiin 


^^^AbramLElfas-- 


Farnsworth  Chgl^  Peabody 
.  a  erguson  .  y 

_ _ _ A  - - - 


George  Foster  Peabody 
Francis  K.  Pendleton 
David  H.  G.  Penny 
Mrs.  R.  B.  Perry 
À.  E.  Phoutrides 
C.  R.  Post 
Wm.  Kelly  Prentice 
Walter  W.  Price 
Fleming  H,  Revell 
James  S.  Roberts 
John  D.  Rockefeller,  Jr. 
Herbert  L.  Satterlee 
Mortimer  Schiff 
Walter  Scott 
Alex.  Sedgwick 
Miran  Sevasly 
Finley  J.  Shepard 
Charles  H.  Sherrill 
John  A.  Sleicher  ^ 

Kendall  K.  Smith 
R.  A.  C.  Smith 
Herbert  W.  Smyth 
Lispenard  Stewart 
Wm.  Rhinelander  Stewart 
Joseph  R.  Taylor 
E.  C.  Travlos 
I  William  J  .  Tully 
C.  F.  Valentine 
W.  H.  Van  Allen  t 
Frank  A.  Vanderlip 
Andrew  F,  West 
Mrs.  C.  E.  Whitmore 
Louis  Wiley 
George  T.  Wilson 
P.  J.  Zachs 


ilumbia  University  Post-Office,  Substation 


